14 Minutes from Earth

"Hearing Alan's voice means he's alive". Phew, thank goodness the wise engineers helped us pathetically moronic non-engineers understand such a thing. Ugh.

Greetings again from the darkness. The audience for this documentary is probably every after-school Science club, although most anyone with a sense of wonder will find it interesting enough. Four directors (Jerry Kobler, Adam "Tex" Davis, Trey Nelson, Erich Sturm) combine to present visual proof of a middle-aged Google executive reaching for the stars … or more accurately, pursuing his dream of free-falling from the stratosphere.

The film begins with an introductory and basic overview of the stratosphere being one of five layers to Earth's atmosphere – and the most difficult to access and study. Tribute is paid to Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian skydiver, who in 2012 set the exit altitude record for his jump from the stratosphere. It's at this point we are introduced to Alan Eustace, the Google executive who wishes to go higher/fall farther than Baumgartner For the next couple of years, Eustace and his team of brainiacs discuss, draw, develop, calculate, re-calculate and test their many theories and concepts on how to bring the project to life. To paraphrase Matt Damon's character in The Martian, they science and technology the sh## of out of this.

Developing a space suit, a specialized parachute, a balloon the size of a football stadium, and the necessary equipment to take Eustace up and get him back is actually a pretty fascinating project to follow … especially the errors and mistakes. The human element is never far away, and just to make sure we know that, Eustace's wife makes a couple of appearances.

When you or I catch a flight from Chicago O'Hare to LAX, our plane's altitude probably reaches about 35,000 feet. Imagine going up another 100,000 feet (almost 25 miles above Earth's surface) and then being dropped with an experimental parachute … now you understand the Eustace dream.

As interesting as the details are, it's unfortunate there isn't more of a scientific discovery aspect to the project and the story. It's mostly just some rich Google dude pursuing a hobby that you and I would never consider. As viewers, we are rewarded with some spectacular and rare photographic evidence of the mission, and a part of our atmosphere that we wouldn't ordinarily see. One of the quotes about Eustace is his commitment to the Google way … "We believe in the impossible". So it's refreshing to know that in this day and age, there are still pioneers and risk-takers, and the technology exists to record it all.

I don't think anyone would really believe a documentary would be released of a failure, or of the main character dying, so the cliffhanger moments are really overdone. And as has been noted by other reviewers: the science we're promised at the beginning is entirely missing. What really grated on my sense of reality was calling him their "pilot" - he had no more control than Abraham Lincoln would, if they had dropped a penny from that height, so he wasn't piloting anything. But if you can get past all that, it's actually an interesting story about a lot of money being spent to seriously risk a man's life just to break someone else's useless record. No mention at all is made of the ONE guy who originally did this for actual science - Colonel Joe Kittinger.

In principle this should have been a stellar movie. The story is interesting, the visuals frequently dramatic, and there are lots of details that can be explained to appeal to the likely audience.

Unfortunately the writer/directors seemed to think they were creating a piece of Reality TV. The entire movie is paced and narrated in Reality TV style -- narrator says something, then the even happens and participants say the exact same thing, then five minutes later narrator repeats the thing. The audience are treated as morons who can't remember anything for longer than 30 seconds, and who need even the most trivial issues explained to them.

And so rather than a serous, technical documentary that would have a natural audience, we have this nonsense which will appeal to no-one. Engineers watching it will lose patience within 20 minutes, those uninterested in engineering would rather be watching the Real Housewives of Silicon Valley.

The obvious comparison is to the Red Bull Stratos movie, Mission to the Edge of Space. Regardless of the differences in engineering approach, the latter is a vastly superior movie because the creators know and respect their audience.

Unfortunately, engineering has become some math cult you have to suffer through. Frying your brain to memorize formulas that a smart engineer would simply design a program for. Now you have a bunch of "certified" engineers who have lost grasp with common sense. Sending this guy 20 miles in the air and don't even have the most basic procedure solidified.