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Closer to Human Flight
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)."
if you've ever seen a base jumping video 90% chance it was jeb.
Damn those fictional airplanes landing all the time without a parachute!
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Cool stuff, though. I won't be trying it.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
...that this guy is more likely going to win a Darwin Award than survive his fall.
Oh well, I guess something's got to thin the herd...
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
I don't think "first" means what you think it means.
I sure hope he hasn't used wax and feathers as the material for his incredible man flying machine.
If you don't know the current abilities of parachutes, now-a-day, you should do your research.
Shouldn't that be wingsuits? I should dearly hope that most people know the abilities of parachutes - they have been a regular plot device in the media for years.
with some Powerking(tm) bars!
See pictures of tits
why most famous BASE jumpers are dead. This is it. Unless he's got some secret technology nobody knows about, this is likely suicide. It's also not good for the public image of skydiving when sombody dies like this.
I'm no expert in aerodynamics or atmospheric dynamics, but don't you take a huge risk with that (apart from the obvious things) with the help of a nasty gust, updraft or the like, an un recoverable spin could occur.... The problem with having a set of wings and no engine is once you our out of control, recovery won't be easy.
So we are gonna have Batman soon.. Position of Robin is probably available. Any takers ?
... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
I'm sure these guys know what they're doing and are figuring out the equations, but here's a suggestion I would like to make: try landing in the suit near the edge of a big cliff, like perhaps near the Grand Canyon, for example. If Jeb gets very low and doesn't like his chances, he could try his damndest to pull up and clear the cliff edge, giving him another chance to release his parachute.
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.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
It's more of a very impressive controlled fall. Can the wing suits be used in conjunction with parachutes so as to have a back up in case of a failed opening?
...from the Addams Family. Every time he did a jump, he used a smaller parachute. By his theory, eventually he would not need any paracute at all.
And of course, he was correct. Eventually, he would have no need for a paracute...
Human flight? don't you mean slowed and directed human falling? It's not like he can leave the ground as soon as he starts flapping his wing suit.
There are a few people that have fallen out of commercial airliners and survived. They didn't have wing suits and fell thousands and thousands of feet.
That's falling... with STYLE!
Way cool... nice photos in TFA.
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--it's very important to land with zero injuries," said Corliss after analyzing data from the test flight.
Thought they might have been rocket scientists or maybe brain surgeons to figure this one out!
Why anyone would want to get out of a perfectly-functioning airplane is beyond me!
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Not strictly true - the following is one of several true stories of WW2 bomber crew jumping without chutes and surviving.. in this case because he landed on a glass-roofed railwsy station and was slowed by successive levels of shattering glass
Man Survived 22,000-Foot Fall Out of Bomber
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
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.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Coral Cache Linkse ty/jump.cgi?ID=556&view=Photo1 e ty/jump.cgi?ID=556&view=Photo2 e ty/jump.cgi?ID=556&view=Photo3
http://www.dropzone.com.nyud.net:8090/cgi-bin/saf
http://www.dropzone.com.nyud.net:8090/cgi-bin/saf
http://www.dropzone.com.nyud.net:8090/cgi-bin/saf
a madman on fire imagining that he can fly like batman ??? .....
c00l
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
I'm thinking this gent will need an awful lot of beverage before the jump.
I'm also reminded of a cartoon engery bars.
"This Powersauce newsbreak is brought to you buy Powersauce: Get sauced with Powersauce!"
Chuck Berry will be attempting something similar in Winter 2005.
That's one big caveat. ;-)
As a couple of posters have already pointed out, this seems more like directed falling or gliding than flying. So, would someone here like to take a shot at clarifying the dividing lines between falling, gliding and flying?
Since parachutists can do all sorts of aerobatic maneuvers by stretching out their arms and making their bodies into airfoils their maneuverability would seem to make what they are doing flying or maybe gliding. But, other than my intent to slow my descent before landing, what differentiates falling from this kind of flying?
Bureaucracy loves company.
as no one has ever survived a landing attempt without a parachute.
I don't know whether people have survived "attempts", but you can certainly survive falls from airplanes without a parachute: hitting brushes, trees, water, or snow can break your fall sufficiently so that you don't die. Theoretically, even hitting a solid, hard surface is survivable if you break the fall correctly (but I don't know of any actual cases).
Be a real downer if it doesn't work. He'll probably be in a big depression.
rewriting history since 2109
> Basically airfoils, they can perform close to an airplane wing
Nope. Not even close.
Aircraft wings are still MUCH more efficient in producing more lift, and produce at least 10 times less drag than even the latest parachutes. That directly translates into better performance.
The trick I think is to develop enough forward speed. More forward speed develops more lift. In a regular plane, you do something called a flare as you land. As you get close to the touchdown point, you steer up (technically, you change your angle of attack). This burns off forward speed and creates lift. This guy has a lot more freedom about his angle of attack. (Him landing on his feet would be the equivalent of a plane landing on its tail.) I think it could work but, of course, I'm not going to try it. My guess is that he will still have a lot of forward velocity when he has essentially no lift left.
The more I think about it, the more I think I agree with the parent.
Why? I couldn't care less about the abillties of current parachutes.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
I never thought I'd live to see the day when humans would take to the air.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Don't Fly!! Don't Fly!!
You'll get too close to the sun and your wings will melt !!
-- Icarus
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
With Gorilla Gone? Will There Be Hope For Freefallers?
The Custom Mary
Surely if this is human flight (as the Slashdot headline surmises), then hang gliding and paragliding is too? At least with a hang-glider you can soar.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
An Austrian crossed the English channel in the summer of 2003 with a wing suit.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
...it's human landing without killing yourself that's the tricky part.
You guys are very quick at pointing out how ridiculous this idea sounds. Have you guys seen fotage of the wingsuit in use? It's pretty impressive. Why is it totally impossible to take it a step further? Don't you think that before the wingsuit, people were ridiculing it? And the parachute too? And the airplane? I'm not saying it's a sure thing, but it may very well be possible to land safely with a wingsuit.
On a related note, I've read that in the Halifax explosion, someone was thrown a few kilometers through the air, landed in a tree, and survived.
This was mentioned as an anecdote in a physics book I used two years ago. Does anyone have any further information on this event?
DOOOOMED!!one!1!
..if he is going to land the wingsuit or not.
Its whether or not he's going to make a hole in the ground, and if he'll be able to climb out of it afterwards...
This guy watched one too few cartoons. He must have missed the Wyle E. Coyote episode with the wingsuit.
quote: "if jeb SURVIVES this, he will be my hero" LOL........what's with the "if he survives".......
Best quote from the article:
... mutually exclusive.
"If Jeb lands the wing-suit without a parachute and survives--he is going to be my hero," added Cani.
Between the lines:
And, if he doesn't survive - he'll be dead. Hero/dead
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
I believe that Douglas Adams actually channeled this guy's thoughts during the attempt:
And wow! Hey! What's this thing coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding word like... ow... ound... round... ground! That's it! That's a good name - ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me.
Can someone explain to me how the hell these people survived? I always thought you could even hit water and still be crushed at such heights. (On the other hand it's nice to know you pass out before hitting the ground).
Gliding is un-powered flight. Birds use it also, same goes for thermals. A baseball flys, by definition flight is something moving thru the air, generating lift isn't really required.
Obviously the title should have been something more like "Man lands winged suit, will he survive?"
So is the idea sound? Sure. Increase horizontal speed to generate a reasonable vertical decent rate, bleed off the horizontal speed close enough to the ground the vertical acceleration is negligable, and prepare to eat dirt =) Obviously landing verticaly is the ideal scenerio, but they'll work out how to accomplish the landing flare before they attempt a ground landing...
Do I want to be one of the first to try it? So long as i'm not footing the gas bill, and we can do mid air practices till I'm content. Sure why not.
This seems to be exactly the same thing I have been watching every July 4th for over ten years. So far as I can tell, his wing may be a little narrower, front to back, but each year I watch the group from the local club glide in on a controlled wing to try and hit a small target. What makes this new one such a big deal?
He just copied his squirrel !
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:WOwb89dacVQJ: www.basejump.org/discus/articles/family.html+%22BA SE+jumpers%22+dead&hl=en&client=firefox-a
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!
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying:
"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy.
All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.
Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
It is notoriously difficult to prise your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people's failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.
If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinity, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.
This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration.
Bob and float, float and bob.
Ignore all considerations of your own weight and simply let yourself waft higher.
Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful.
They are most likely to say something along the lines of, 'Good God, you can't possibly be flying!'
It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right.
Waft higher and higher.
Try a few swoops, gentle ones at first, then drift above the treetops breathing regularly.
DO NOT WAVE AT ANYBODY.
When you have done this a few times you will find the moment of distraction rapidly becomes easier and easier to achieve.
You will then learn all sorts of things about how to control your flight, your speed, your manoeuvrability, and the trick usually lies in not thinking too hard about whatever you want to do, but just allowing it to happen as if it was going to anyway.
You will also learn about how to land properly, which is something you will almost certainly cock up, and cock up badly, on your first attempt.
There are private flying clubs you can join which help you achieve the all-important moment of distraction. They hire people with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes and exhibit and/or explain them at the critical moments. Few genuine hitch-hikers will be able to afford to join these clubs, but some may be able to get temporary employment at them."
-- Douglas Adams, 'The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy'
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.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Lieutenant Chisov survived mainly through being unconscious - he landed on the side of an extremely steep ravine filled with snow several feet deep and slid through the snow all the way to the bottom, where he awoke with serious bruises, a few fractures and presumably a sense of bewilderment. The British gunner survived in near-identical circumstances but was totally unhurt. The Germans refused to believe his story....
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
It all comes down to how much you can move an object. When you hit water the object has to move sideways to get out of your way. This is much harder to achieve than moving something down (i.e. by breaking glass) plus the glass will weigh a hell of a lot less than a few hundred meters of water going straight down, so the opposing force is a lot less.
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.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Glass breaks easily, but not so easily that it won't slow you down going through it. Knock off sufficient speed and you'll hit the ground with a mighty THUMP, but you won't quite go SPLAT. Same with snow.
Water, on the other hand, has a large amount of surface tension. You know that slimy goop that you made in school using cornstarch and water? You barely touch it and it's gooey, you whack it with a hammer and it breaks like a solid. Same principle. You hit the water at 60 MPH you might as well be hitting pavement.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
You might be right, but I think he'll bounce back from it pretty quickly.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
"it's very important to land with zero injuries,"
I knew that.
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
Somebody put a turbine in the grave of Charles Darwin!
What this guy is going to attempt to pull off will generate at least 10 megawatts!
WTF is the submitter smoking? I don't get it.
/head 'asplodes
I remember reading about all those people in my Second-Edition Dungeon Master's Guide! Wow, what a nerd I am!
Read jack phelps dot net
It depends on how you hit. When I was kid water skiing, I would regularly be whipped with the boat doing 70 and my speeds were in excess of 90. A wipe out hurt, but no big deal as a I was skipping across the water.
OTH, when barefoot skiiing, I would "trip" and simply hit once (no skipping). That actually hurt a great deal. Nasty headaches.
If somebody hit water not straight on, but can curve in (preferably feet first), they avoid the hit.
Got to say, if I was Jeb, I would try his landings on the water first, then go to land.
http://www.flybirdman.com/ all you wanted to know about wingsuit flight..
That's not flying... that's falling with style.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
Thanks wikipedia.
Link:
Click here
Iraq: war to save the U
Sure you can use GPS to develope out of ground effect angle of attack and attitude change curves that will be required to arrest his decent to a resonable (survivable) level. ...and then he'll actually try it in ground effect after jumping from on high. His arms, which are acting as the functional equivalent of a wing spar, won't be able to handle the 50% increase in lift and he will crash painfully into the ground. Normal parachute canopies operate well out of ground effect.
Beyond all that, he's operating in lifting body territory. High speeds, very little latteral stability and control input frequency possibly beyond human capability.
He's a dawrin award canidate if I've every seen one.
The cornstarch/water mixture is an example of a STF (Shear Thickening Fluid), which has a non-Newtonian flow. A recent Slashdot post nicely explains how hitting water at high speed differs from hitting a STF at high speed.
A friend of mine who was in the military (briefly) told me about "earth angels": soldiers who had survived their chute not opening. Supposedly, they are transferred out of their unit rapidly, not because they don't want to go back up, but their presence creeps out the rest of their unit.
Anyone care to confirm?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
For those who wonder what a wingsuit looks like in action, check out some of the videos on this page. I particularly enjoyed the one called "BirdMan on Monte Brento" which links to this other page.
My other sig is funnier.
The article says no one has ever survived a fall without a parachute... but I've heard of people who've jumped and had their parachutes not deploy. In those cases, they've survived (though barely)
That's not flying! It's falling with style!
If Jeb gets very low and doesn't like his chances, he could try his damndest to pull up and clear the cliff edge, giving him another chance to release his parachute.
The way I interpreted the article: he doesn't have a parachute. So first time right...
Z
This would be a great way to commute to work. Imagine hoping on an airplane in the morning, cruising up to the requisite altitude for the glide to the office, and then falling out of the sky right in front of the door. Anyone who happened to be taking a smoke break at the time would have the bejesus scared out of them.
Did you ride the short bus? http://sh.ortb.us
If you watch that scene carefully you'll see that both stuntmen had on slim chutes under their suits. I saw something about it on a TLC show once.
Derek
Don't Panic...
it's very important to land with zero injuries
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
I heard about a French guy once, who had done the math, and worked out that free-falling with a snowboard is pretty close to the speed and direction of the guys hopping off the 80m ski jumps.
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.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
I'm no expert in aerodynamics or atmospheric dynamics, but don't you take a huge risk with that (apart from the obvious things) with the help of a nasty gust, updraft or the like, an un recoverable spin could occur.... The problem with having a set of wings and no engine is once you our out of control, recovery won't be easy.
:-) )
With the wingsuit, you can fold your arms and legs in and get rid of your "wings", and lose all lift. So it would be easy to recover from a spin if he went into one. He'd merely go from an out of control aircraft to a controlled skydive (if you count falling like a rock as "controlled"
Also, about the comment about having no engine, as another poster pointed out having no engine can help prevent the spin. It is often the torque of the engine and/or the propeller wash over one wing which causes one wing to stall before the other and cause the plane to go into a flat spin in the first place. When you stall the plane with the engine on, it's called a "power on stall" and it can help induce a flat spin.
In any event, as most posters have pointed out he's more likely to pancake into the ground.
"If Jeb lands the wing-suit without a parachute and survives--he is going to be my hero," added Cani.
I wouldn't imagine landing would be the hard bit...
Oh yeah? Well the 1e DMG had even more tables and junk.
I ran across this video a year or so back, when I was actually doing that jumping out of planes thing.
I believe it's of Loic Jean-Albert, the fellow that shot the photos in the article. I could be wrong, but pretty sure the guy in the video is named Loic. What the fellow does is jump out of a helicopter over a mountain that he had picked out because of the angle of slope. He matches the slope after he picks up speed and comese about 9 feet from the surface. Granted, he's flying at about 70mph, but quite honestly if he had some kind of sled/sky on his chest I betcha he could have put himself down on that mountain.
Here's the video. Go easy on me -- It's just a 768k DSL line.
I just flew in from Pittsburgh and, boy, are my arms tired!
Ba-doom-boom.
Thanks, negativeblue, for forcing a million Slashdot readers to type "wingsuit" into Google. Can we now collectively bill you for a dime times a million, for a total of $100,000? A donation in that amount to EFF would be sufficient.
And thanks, Hemos, for doing such a great job as editor. There is evidently some kind of race out there to be the first to land without a parachute, and the story doesn't even touch on it because neither the submitter nor the Slashdot editor took the time to do the Google search imposed by the snotty submitter.
It seems that this is becoming the norm on Slashdot. Nobody takes the time to see if the story is even legitamate before posting. They need an editor badly. Articles posted that are not spell checked, (bad credibility). Articles, such as this one, that don't tell the whole story, or the real story. That removes credibility from all slashdot articles. This place is going to be religated to the corners of the net normally reserved for 'The Onion' if they keep going in this direction. Slashdot used to be good. It's getting slashed and dotted pretty bad recently.
... and shot him?
If you post it, they will read.
http://www.cbpq.org.br/downloads/video01.zip It is worth the download (5mb)! The 'chute is the size of a picnic blanket. I've seen bigger kites. The guys has balls, it has to be said. Maybe he would have experimented with stuff like 'how short a stick can you poke a sabre-tooth with and get away from it' if he lived in a neolithic hunter-gatherer society. Today he can convert himself to pizza in a remarkably inventive fashion. Either way, natural selection (he jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane with a blanket, he'd have found something equally dangerous 10,000 years ago) will out. It's all about passing your genes on. Of course, the fact he can do such spectaculary stupid things with ease might mean he ends-up with so many girls that by the time he IS pizza he will have potentially out-bred most of us. Maybe being a dare-devil is an Evolutionary Stable Stratagy?
for those that don't know what "base jumping" is (I didn't) here is a helpfully (insane!) video clip:o v
http://download.ifilm.com/qt/portal/2660162_200.m
To jump and miss the ground.
Oh yeah? Well the 1e DMG had even more tables and junk.
Obviously you've never played first edition. 2e had far more tables, more supplements, more detailed rules, and less powerful mages. All in all it was less fun unless you didn't want to be creative.
Which is why they think he might live. If he can at least achieve speed and angle needed to survive a water landing it will still be a very cool...something...
And on the movie "Eraser", Ahnold's character jumps out of a plane with no chute because he's chasing after the one that got thrown out of the plane before he did.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
All he needs to do is drink some Red Bull on the way down. It gives you wings! *flies away*
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Wow, you guys are a real downer! You're all saying he's crazy, he can't do it, it's suicide. I really hope this guy succeeds and shuts you haters up.
Must-not-watch TV!
Furthermore, water is not compressible. On the otehr hand, Iron, for example, is. I would prefer jumping on top an cast-iron instead of water. Probably iron would give more way than water. I'd be still dead.
they said the same thing about the guy who used the first parachute.
And I blieve it takes a little lunacy to take these risks.
I mean Columbus was probably a little luny as well.
finally:
"Why should I be attired with the epithet looney merely because I have a pet halibut?"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" Lieutenant Chisov survived mainly through being unconscious "
should read:
" Lieutenant Chisov survived mainly through being one lucky son of a bitch. However being in the relaxed state of unconsiousness prevented him from tensing up and screaming like a girl."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"If Jeb lands the wing-suit without a parachute and survives--he is going to be my hero," added Cani.
Cani latter added:
"If it doesn't work, I'll be around to help Jeb out of his depression."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wile E. Coyote has been doing this for years, the secret is roller skates!
but no random dungeon generator, and none of the cool little comics.
please, what gamer lets a little thing like 'rules' stand in the way of a game?
well, sadly, most of them..let me rephrase:
what gamer lets a little thing like 'rules' stand in the way of a good game?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"If Jeb lands the wing-suit without a parachute and survives--he is going to be my hero," added Cani.
Flout 'em and scout 'em,
and scout 'em and flout 'em;
Thought is free. - Shakespeare [The Tempest]
The lift L of an object is described by the equation:
L = 1/2*p*U^2*Cl*S
Where p is density, U is airspeed, Cl is coefficient of lift, and S is the surface area of the airfoil. Minimum airspeed occurs at the maximum Cl, when the airfoil hits its stall angle, and when L is equal to the weight of the aircraft. It's fairly simple to solve for U.
Given a density of 1.225kg/m^3 for the atmosphere, a maximum lift coefficient of 1.2 for a delta wing , a fairly generous surface area of 2m^2 and a mass of 75 kg, I got a stall speed of 22m/s or 50mph. This is a pretty ball-park figure. Is a 50mph landing potentially survivable? Sure, but I think it's just as likely to kill you, and I'd be damn surprised if you came out of it without some serious broken bones. Even if he doubles the surface area he's still coming in at 35 miles an hour. So simple WWI-era algebra shows that you need a hell of a lot more surface area to do this safely. I think this guy's a frigging idiot.
IAAHG/PGP (I am a hang glider/paraglider pilot).
:)
Parachute performance remains, as always, NOTHING like airplane performance -- even the slickest, fasted skydiving rigs don't glide better than a few-to-one ratio. Top paragliders, which fly slowly at 15-35mph, max out at 9-to-1 glide ratio.
That aside:
Landing an unpowered aircraft is all about flare timing and landing gear -- you've got to dissipate as much kinetic and potential energy as possible before you have to interface with the ground. Especially when you don't have wheels! If you've got wheels and a smooth surface, you can land a five-hundred ton plane with high reliability. Without wheels, and on a really rough surface (say a mountainside), only the best hang glider pilots (wing loading ~1lb/sqft, total system mass ~220lbs) can consistently land safely, and even then it's tight. Ever notice how swooping contests tend to happen near lakes?
In hang gliders and paragliders both, and increase in ground speed is invariably met with a decrease in the size of the "flare window" -- i.e. the interval in which you can initiate the flare and
a) not gain too much altitude before coming back down
b) not be too late and nose in due to stall.
It's a very delicate dance. Given that skydivers swooping routinely land at 40+ mph, I don't think it's impossible, but the amount of control you have in a wingsuit is pretty minimal. I predict grievous injury, but probably not death.
Landing on water, however, seems *entirely* plausible.
not me, I let a little thing like 'rules' help me run the other players ragged before I kill them and take their stuff in some sneaky manner.
This is obviously a tricky solution. Why not do what we routinely do when designing aircraft. Use computer simulation. This guy is gathering lots of data so he has a baseline. Somebody who knows what they are doing could save a life here.
Its just a bunch of parachute sections under the arms, one under each armpit, and one between the legs. Its not like hes flying, sure he might catch a few air currents, but for the most part hes just trying to land with three tiny parachutes...its rather standard, jump out of plane and fall to the ground using the drag of the parachute to slow you down.
"ACME! The only Bat-Man outfit worn by bats!"
This looks like something out of a really bad scifi movie.
Still looks like fun, though.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
I think he's going to fall down a lot and die.
-> Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
God you are dumb. The effect that stops movement through a liquid is viscosity, not surface tension. Surface tension is a weak force, powerful enough to hold up a pond skater up or a raindrop together, and not much more.
Actually, according to my late grandfather, he wanted to shoot them. The way my grandfather told the story, the guy was the rear-gunner from the Lancaster, and the whole tailsection (with the guy in it) was shot off, and landed in the snow. I imagine this gave him some protection, too. When a squad of Germans came to check the wreckage, apparently they had to talk him out of trying to shoot his way through with only his service revolver.
Note that I don't necessarily take what the old man told me as gospel. If anybody has a link to more details of this story I'd love to hear them, though.
sustainable living
I believe the record is more like 33,000 feet.
If he landing badly in the water it would be like a belly-flop from hell.
I'm sure landing on water wouldn't be ideal, but remember, he wouldn't be coming straight down, but rather at an acute angle and attempting to flare as he approaches landing, so I would think that hitting water, while still bearing a high chance of injury, would hurt a lot less than hitting the ground.
He might not be able to swim in the flying suit, but an inflatable emergency vest would help him considerably.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
The guy I'm talking about fell from a still-complete aeroplane with no protection at all. Perhaps there were two such incidents? Or perhaps it's wartime propaganda that's survived :-p
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
If you like to read the satire in the Onion, then you should also try SlashNot.com It's satire write in the Slashdot format. The Slashdot staff hates it with a passion and there is a lot of antomosity for some odd reason. It's makes it even more fun to read knowing that.
Assuming a successful landing, is it unreasonable that a wingsuit could be supplied with forward thrust, and take off? There used to be a song titled "it's the eighties, so where are our rocket packs?" Maybe they're still in the works... (if a little late)
Jedis are stupid. If they were so powerful, why couldn't they handle counseling for a kid who missed his mom?
People like to say it because commercial aviation (the only kind most of us realistically have access to) is much safer than flying. For every 100,000,000 miles traveled by car we see about 1.7 deaths. For every 100,000,000 miles traveled by commericial aviation, we see about 0.7 deaths. (source) Even including the September 11th attacks research shows flying is much safer than driving. So if you're planning your trip across country, you are about twice as safe flying than driving. (Of course, in both cases the odds of dying are very small.) Flying is not a risky activity by any realistic measure. Noting the apparently large number of famous people who died in airplanes is a distraction. First, many of these people aren't flying commercial airlines like the rest of us. The numbers are very different if you're flying yourself or on a special flight. Those are special cases, including them is like including crashes in Nascar races in driving safety measurements. Second, any death by flight gets much more coverage than an auto death, especially if someone famous is involved. We're getting distorted news. Third, famous people tend to fly more. If you exclusively fly your chances of getting in an auto accident are zero. It's still safer than if you'd chosen to travel those miles by car.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
yep, "Vesna Vulovic, a stewardess on a Yugoslav DC 9 jet airliner that blew up in January of 1972 fell more than 33,000 feet in the wreckage of the plane, which hit a snow-covered slope. Badly injured and paralyzed from the waist down, later recovered and now can walk."