Austrian skydiver and utter lunatic Felix Baumgartner successfully completed his jump from 128,100 feet above sea level over the weekend, breaking or setting several records in the process. There was an additional record set that wasn’t planned on and it all happened on the internet.
Baumgartner expected to set a record for the highest manned balloon flight, highest jump, longest freefall and becoming the first human to break the sound barrier without the aid of a vehicle. All of those records were completed, bar one, including the last which saw him reach a top speed of 833.9 miles per hour (1342 kilometres per hour). It seems that reaching Mach 1.24 denied Felix the longest freefall record by 17 seconds. That accolade still belongs to Joe Kittinger, who set the record in 1960.
An additional record was set on the internet during the event, for the most livestreams set up to capture the space jump attempt. The total livestreams set up tops 8 million for the event, according to reports. The previous best was 500,000 concurrent streams, arranged by Google for the recent Olympics events held in London.
Source: AllThingsD
