Skydiver Luke Aikins figures his next leap into thin air will start pretty much like the thousands that preceded it, only with one small but significant difference: This time when he steps out of the plane at 25,000 feet he won't take his parachute with him. If all goes according to plan, he will land two minutes later in a trawler-like fishing net 20 stories above the ground and only about a third the size of a football field. If he can pull it off, he will put his name in the history books as the only skydiver to go from plane to planet Earth without a parachute.
If he can pull it off, he will put his name in the history books as the only skydiver to go from plane to planet Earth without a parachute and live to tell about it.
Apparently he has to wear a chute too, false advertisement 101.
I read in another forum that he'd actually practiced the jump quite a few times. Which only makes sense. Do it out of a helicopter right above the net, go up a little higher, a little higher, a little higher. At first testing the arresting mechanism mostly. Then from a helicopter high enough to track, which would be just a few hundred feet. Then from high enough to reach terminal velocity, which is about 1500 feet. Then from a plane. Then more practice jumps with a parachute in case he wanted to bail out midway in the jump.
I think the only reason he jumped from 25,000 feet was for the made-for-TV drama of a two minute free fall.
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Its never about the jump, its about the landing. :biggrin:
I mean, it's physics. A human body has a terminal velocity at freefall (120mph, which actually isn't that fast) so together with the mass you can calculate the force that the netting needs to bleed off for a safe landing. I'm sure they engineered it way above the spec. Stopping a human being safely going at 120mph over a distance of 20 stories (20 x 10ft = 200ft)? Yeah, that's totally doable.
The part that has randomness is aiming and hitting the net and the correct part of the net. If there was a strong gust it could possibly blow him unrecoverably off course, which is why single-person "aviators" (wing suit guys, skydivers, paragliders (me), hang gliders, etc) always tend to do things in stable, know weather and wind.
No, he is capable of flying forward at a pretty good clip. A strong gust would be like a fart in a whilrwind, when compared to his velocity.I mean, it's physics. A human body has a terminal velocity at freefall (120mph, which actually isn't that fast) so together with the mass you can calculate the force that the netting needs to bleed off for a safe landing. I'm sure they engineered it way above the spec. Stopping a human being safely going at 120mph over a distance of 20 stories (20 x 10ft = 200ft)? Yeah, that's totally doable.
The part that has randomness is aiming and hitting the net and the correct part of the net. If there was a strong gust it could possibly blow him unrecoverably off course, which is why single-person "aviators" (wing suit guys, skydivers, paragliders (me), hang gliders, etc) always tend to do things in stable, know weather and wind.
If he can pull it off, he will put his name in the history books as the only skydiver to go from plane to planet Earth without a parachute.