On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier flying an experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1. And as jets continued to fly higher and faster, the United States Air Force (USAF) became increasingly worried about the safety of flight crews who had to eject at high altitude. Its tests in Operation High Dive, using dummies and not actual airmen, showed that free-fall at high altitudes usually resulted in flat spins at a rate of up to 200 revolutions per minute, which were potentially fatal. So to solve this, the USAF initiated Project Excelsior to design a parachute system that would allow for safe, controlled descent from high altitudes. A technician at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, by the name of Francis Beaupre, devised a multistage parachute system that consisted of a drogue parachute that served to stabilize and mitigate uncontrolled spinning or tumbling and a main chute that would be deployed at a lower, more optimal altitude.

If you watched the Red Bull Stratos jump yesterday, you saw Excelsior’s test pilot in the mission control booth, Joseph Kittinger. Back in 1960, he set records for highest parachute jump, longest drogue fall and fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere, jumping from a gondola at nearly 103,000 feet above the Earth. He served as Felix Baumgartner’s mentor throughout the Stratos project and, yesterday, as “Capcom” (Capsule Communications), Kittinger was his primary point of radio contact from start to finish.

For those of you who missed yesterday’s jump, Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver, rocketed head first from 128,000 feet up for more than four minutes hitting 833.9 MPH— or Mach 1.24 — before deploying his parachute and became the first human to break the sound barrier without vehicular assistance exactly 65 years after Yeager made history to the day, and it was nothing short of incredible. According to a Q&A on The Guardian: Prior to the jump, his team of aeronautics, medical and engineering experts “identified 16 key risks, including: ultraviolet radiation; wind shear; landing impact; extreme temperatures; hypoxia, oxygen starvation; decompression sickness; entering a flat spin during the descent; ‘shock-shock interaction,’ an explosive effect when shock waves in the air collide when passing through the sound barrier; fire aboard the capsule” as well as a “‘breach’ in the suit or capsule and, finally, the accidental deployment of a parachute, that had to be overcome for the record attempt to succeed.” Here, the phrase “for the record attempt to succeed” can be used interchangeably with “for Baumgartner not die.” Knowing this full well, Baumgartner, like Yeager and Kittinger before him, committed to something bigger than himself and pushed the envelope to provide valuable medical and scientific insight for future pioneers despite the immense risks.

And while I do think that the jump may have been the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen, I couldn’t help but wonder what Red Bull stands to gain from sponsoring this project outside of confirming its slogan. That’s until I looked at the numbers and realized that the live stream shattered more than free fall records. By attracting eight million concurrent viewers, the mission proved to be YouTube’s most highly watched live stream. It was broadcasted on more than 40 television networks in 50 different countries, and it drew over 2.6 million social media mentions throughout the course of the day according to an article on Radian6 by Jason Boies.

Ben Sturner, President and CEO of Leverage Agency, a full-service sports, entertainment and media marketing company, says, “The sponsorship transcended sports and entertainment into Pop Culture, hitting new consumers that Red Bull does not usually capture and on a global scale. The value for Red Bull is in the tens of millions of dollars of global exposure, and Red Bull Stratos will continue to be talked about and passed along socially for a very long time.”

At the end of the day, what’s your brand investing in?

Photo Credits: RedBullStratos.com, RedBullUSA.com, Jason Boies