#Red bull space drop full#

Well, although he may be a highly acclaimed computer nerd, Eustace is also known for his love for adrenaline. This guy has more degrees than a protractor and he’s also one of the top employees at one of the biggest companies in the world.īut that doesn’t exactly explain how or why he went about jumping from the edge of the stratosphere.

So all of the above is pretty impressive. It’s also worth noting that Alan has helped start up some pretty awesome community projects – like the Second Harvest Food Bank, which feeds more than 37 million people in America. Just a man jumping from space because he fancied a thrill. No marketing strings or promotion pushing. The project was self-funded, with no help from Google, Red Bull or any other corporation. That explains how he paid for the space jump then. Reports indicate that he is one of the top-paid executives at Google, and that he earned a cool $12 million in 2010. We can only assume that since Google knows everything in the world, Alan Eustace is also blessed with similarly omniscient powers, and has Google Maps inbuilt in his brain.įor his efforts at the company, Eustace earns a fair bit of cash. The adrenaline-seeker then joined Google in 2002, four years after its creation, as a Vice President of Engineering.Īlan has now risen to become the Vice President of the ‘Knowledge Department’ at Google, which means he oversees the search function for the company – arguably one of the more important tasks. Entering The Google Search EngineĪfter graduation, Eustace worked for a variety of electronics companies over a 15 year period, working on internet performance, power management and tonnes of other cool shit we don’t understand. Fair play to the guy.Įustace soon switched majors to computer science though – despite an advisor telling him there was ‘no future’ in the industry – and went on to complete three academic degrees in the field, including a doctorate in 1984. There, he chose to major in mechanical engineering, and, according to the Orlando Sentinel, “worked part-time selling popcorn and ice cream in Fantasyland and working on the monorail system” to pay for classes. The Google senior Vice President has “a reputation in Silicon Valley for thrill-seeking”…Įustace graduated from high school in 1974 and received a debate scholarship from Valencia College, where he studied for a year before transferring to Florida Technological University. His family used to crowd around to watch every launch from Cape Canaveral, the US hub for spacecraft launching, and Alan clearly took an interest that only continued to grow. The skydiving expert took a love for flight at a young age though.

The guy may have gone on to break badass records and make millions with Google, but his early jobs included selling peanuts at the age of 11 and fixing motors and pumps for the city of Orlando. So just who the hell is this space-leaping madman, and how did he decide to set about breaking the speed of sound? We blew the dust off the archives and had a search for some answers… From Pine Hills To Three Degrees And A P.H.Dīorn in 1956 to an engineer father, Alan Eustace grew up in Pine Hills in Orlando, Florida. Eustace was a computer scientist, and with all respect, he looks more like one of those dads who won’t let their kids out past ten than the kind of guy who would take a tumble from the stratosphere.

#Red bull space drop full#

Whereas the world was watching when ‘Fearless Felix’ dropped in on the Red Bull Stratos project, few people even knew that Alan Eustace’s jump, made from a full 135,889.108ft, was happening at all.īaumgartner was a well known daredevil prior to his jump.

So over the weekend, a 57-year-old senior vice-president at Google managed to break Felix Baumgartner’s world record for the highest-altitude skydive.