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SanLouBlues writes "Autoweek has this article about a group of guys in Arizona who will drop your car out of a cargo jet for $15k. Parachutes for the car are optional. Their ultimate goal is to drop a Greyhound with forty people inside. More pictures here and here)"
140mph? Is that right? It seems awfully slow to me. I would have thought that the terminal velocity of a car would have been much higher than that.
Sounds about right to me, especially when you consider that in the normal belly-to-earth position, the human body will hit a terminal velocity of around 120 mph. Cars have more mass, but they also have a lot more surface area against which air molecules will press as they fall, balancing out the extra mass.
Incidentally, I am both a licensed skydiver (A-38847, getting my B before too much longer) and an engineer.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
given that the skill level involved in thusly launching a car without a parachute is essentially zero, fifteen thousand clams seems like a lot of money. whatever it is that they're throwing the car out of is a typical big skydiver hauler. total fuel to 13,000 feet is less than $100 or $200 worst case. Car clean up = $300 or so (let's just say). Pilot - $150, absolute max. Assorted handlers--let's say, a few hundred. $15k seems way out of line.
Of course, if your client is toyota or whoever it said in the article, you might as well charge $150k.
FWIF: (FAA) Federal Aviation Regulations state that it is legal to throw / drop things from an airplane as long as care is taken to insure no damage to persons or property on the surface.
I'm a skydiver, I've got over 400 jumps to my name.
Joe Jennings and crew have been tossing stuff out of airplanes in Arizona for quite a few years now. Joe does it because he's a profesional cinematographer, he's the guy that filmed the skydiving scenes in most of the recent James Bond films, plus recently Charlie's Angels and XXX. If there's an ad that features skydiving, Joe shot it.
Joe films these, and puts them on DVD - his most recent one is called "Good Stuff" - and you can buy it from www.joejennings.com. Buy it. It's worth it. Lots of incredible (and funny!) work.
Geeks will appreciate this. One of the funnier scenes, Joe throws a living room out of the back of the Skyvan. (note the skyvan is a turbo-prop, not a "jet".) I said they threw a living room out. They did it twice, they rigged up sofa's and loveseats, table lamps, telephones, tv sets, bolted it togeather on a platform, stuck two skydivers in the loveseat, the rolled the whole contraption out the back of the tailgate. What made is so cool is the tablelamps actually WORKED, and the TV was turned on. The tv worked all the way to impact.
I chuckled to myself when I read in the article "There have been no close calls, near misses or injuries in any of the jumps." On one of the "living room drops", the living room landed 20 feet from the ground film crew. Overheard on the video is "fuck that was close..."
Anyways I hate to make a post that's largely a sales pitch for a DVD, but for gods sake check this out. It's called "Good Stuff", and you can get it on www.joejennings.com
Its got full video of all of the car drops, both living room drops, the "chuteless" jumps, and whole lotta other REALLY cool shit.
_Am
140mph? Is that right? It seems awfully slow to me. I would have thought that the terminal velocity of a car would have been much higher than that.
Yes. Cars fall EXTREMELY unstable. They tumble, literally. Sometimes they do rotations, sometime they do what we call "potatoe chipping", where they just teeter-totter back and forth.
They tend to fall generally with their axels to the ground, meaning their biggest flat surface area is creating all that drag.
A human body in a belly to earth position has a terminal velocity of about 120 MPH. Put that human body into a verticle position (very dificult to hold), and speeds tend to go up to about 180 mph, but can go as high as 300mph.
Yes, I'm a skydiver. 400 jumps so far, and a "D" (master) licence from the United States Parachute Association.
_Am
or MacAddict... they've dragged one by a chain with a SUV and beaten the crap out of one with a sledge hammer on video before, back in the day. :-)
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Check out the movie G they made where they dropped a camera from 30,000 ft. You can probably find the movie itself at: ftp://ftp.skydivingmovies.com
Cheers,
Costyn. (220 jumps)
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