If you thought it took a pair of plums for Anthony Smith to awake an insomniatic giant then Jeb Corliss must have a couple cantaloupes in his trousers because he’s intent on jumping out of a helicopter without a parachute. Oh, and he plans to live to tell about it to.
Actually, Jeb isn’t alone in his insanity. A bunch of people are hoping to pull the stunt off. In fact, it has even engaged a bit of competition between nations to see who can engineer the technology fastest. As of now, the `technology’ in question consists of a suit that makes him look like a sugar glider and a $2-million-dollar, specially-constructed runway for landing. And the freefall, the brief period of time when Jeb begins regretting going chuteless, should look a little something like this:
All of this is technically possible,” said Jean Potvin, a physics professor at Saint Louis University and a skydiver who does parachute research for the Army. But he acknowledged a problem: “The thing I’m not sure of is your margins in terms of safety, or likelihood to crash.”
Loïc Jean-Albert of France, better known as Flying Dude in a popular YouTube video, put it more bluntly: “You might do it well one time and try another time and crash and die.
Links:
[The New York Times]: Flying Humans, Hoping to Land With No Chute