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Skydriving

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-the-sudden-stop-at-the-end dept.

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)"

2 of 329 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Gaining speeds of up to 140mph"? by AntiNorm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...
  2. My opinion... by AndyMan! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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