Closer to Human Flight 290
negativeblue writes "Dropzone.com has (had) a story about the preparation of a man (Jeb Corliss) who prepares to land a wingsuit without a parachute. If you don't know the current abilities of parachutes, now-a-day, you should do your research. Basically airfoils, they can perform close to an airplane wing (high performance turns and lift)."
landing (Score:5, Interesting)
Cool stuff, though. I won't be trying it.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/ [syslog.org]
There is a reason (Score:5, Interesting)
One nasty gust and he's history. (Score:4, Interesting)
suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, if he did pass the point of no return and went for the landing and overshot a bit, that might be a problem. hmmm.
Water - try landing on water first. Or a mattress - king-size, preferably.
"no one has..survived a landing without a chute" (Score:5, Interesting)
Man Survived 22,000-Foot Fall Out of Bomber [209.157.64.200]
Also:
"The greatest fall without "riding" a piece of wreckage goes to Russian Lt. I.M. Chisov, who bailed out of his Ilyushin 4 bomber at 22,000 feet in January 1942, after being attacked by German fighters. His plan was to free-fall to 1,000 feet before opening his parachute, thus limiting his exposure to enemy fire while still in the air. Unfortunately he lost consciousness on the way down, and never opened his parachute. Like Vulovic, he landed in snow and survived, returning to duty three months later". - link [manbottle.com]
There was also a British gunner from a Lancaster bomber who fell from his aircraft during an attack and was saved by fir trees and deep snow.
That said, I still think this guy's a loon. Nobody ever volunteered to jump without a parachute before.
Re:Closer? (Score:2, Interesting)
article text (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? I couldn't care less about the abillties of current parachutes.
Re:Speed is good (Score:3, Interesting)
This link supports what you're saying. (Score:1, Interesting)
He uses a nitpick statistic of only one *Australian* death in Australia and then death by car but is betrayed by the rest of his talk and familiarity with the problem of dealing with dead base jumpers. That and the point of the page is a howto on getting rid of evidence when a jumper dies. Doth protest too much!
Re:"no one has..survived a landing without a chute (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember seeing a video once of a Hollywood stuntman who jumped out of an airplane without a parachute or "flying suit", and landed on an airbag (not the car kind; the kind that Hollywood stuntmen use for falling-from-a-great-height stunts).
I think that there also have been several cases where a stuntman jumped out of an airplane without a parachute, another stuntman handed him a parachute in mid-air, and the first stuntman put it on and deployed it before reaching the ground.
(One James Bond movie (with Roger Moore as Bond) started with Bond fighting in mid-air with a bad guy and taking his parachute.
I think that this was one of those cases.)
Re:"no one has..survived a landing without a chute (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"no one has..survived a landing without a chute (Score:5, Interesting)
By breaking several layers of glass one by one you slow the body down with a succession of small forces rather than one big one.
Re:surviving falls (Score:3, Interesting)
- Chissov from russia (1942) fell from 6705 meters (20000 feets) on snow, he was wounded but survived.
- Nicolas Stephen Alkemade (1944) survived a fall from 5490 meters (16500 feets). He landed on a tree and a pile of snow and survived.
I only have a document in French though:
Click here. [www.quid.fr]
Re:Speed is good (Score:5, Interesting)
The term "Angle of Attack" is defined as the angle between the chord line of the wing (a line drawn from the leading edge to the trailing edge) and the relative wind, which is essentially your direction of travel through the air. So for instance, during the landing flare the wing's chord line is pointed up with the rest of the plane but the airplane continues a slight descent, making the angle between the two very large compared to cruise flight where they're both pointed more toward what land-lubbers would call level.
The trick is that as the Angle of Attack increases so does lift... to a point. Every airfoil has a critical angle of attack beyond which airflow separates, lift is destroyed, and the airfoil ceases to work aerodynamically and becomes simply an object sticking out into the wind.
I would imagine that this guy will have to build a great deal of forward speed which will give him a flatter trajectory and therefore a lower angle of attack. He'll then need to raise his angle of attack at the right moment and flare without exceeding that critical angle, which may or may not be anything the engineers who built the suit ever determined. He definety does not want to stall the wingsuit. His life depends on its lift.
I know this guy is doing a lot of testing using gps data, etc. to figure all of this out; but it is exceedingly risky.
I predict this will end bad, though I really hope I'm wrong.
Re:"no one has..survived a landing without a chute (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone care to confirm?
Land a Snowboard... (Score:3, Interesting)
He had a plan to jump from a helicopter, and land on a steep powder field in the Alps somewhere. I think around the time (1994), the record for the highest survived drop on skiis or a board was around 270 feet.
Never heard if he pulled it off or not.
(I heard all this over a few beers in a bar in Chamonix, so I've no idea if theres any truth behind it.)
One thing i think is cool though, is that the speed skiing record is about 75 mph faster than a free-fall sky diver.
Re:There is a reason (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm talking about people who keep jumping on a regular basis. Sooner or later, 00 is going to come up on that Roulette wheel, and the more times you play, the more likely you will eventually hit it.
People like to say "you are more likely to die in a car than in a plane", because lots more people die in car crashes than in plane crashes, but if you spent several hours a day flying in planes, the odds of you getting killed in a plane crash become much, much higher. How many touring rock stars died in car crashes in the last 20 years? How many in planes and helicopters?
Skydiving is a high risk activity. If I learn how to do beam gymnastics and get really good at it, I could probably do a beam routine over a pit of lava once and not die. Gymnasts don't fall off the beam very often. However, if I keep doing it on a regular bases, I should expect to get killed doing it sooner or later. Anybody witnessing my behavior would have to assume that I'm some kind of nut to keep pushing my luck like that.