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Flying Humans
mlimber sends us to the NYTimes for a story about flying people who jump from planes or other high locations wearing a wing suit akin to a flying squirrel's. Their efforts have potential military and Xtreme sports applications. The story profiles, with video, one guy who wants to be the first to jump from a plane and land without a parachute (and live). Here's a YouTube video of another of these fliers skimming six feet above skiers in the Swiss Alps. Quoting: "Modern suit design features tightly woven nylon sewn between the legs and between the arms and torso, creating wings that fill with air and create lift, allowing for forward motion and aerial maneuvers while slowing descent. As the suits, which cost about $1,000, have become more sophisticated, so have the pilots. The best fliers, and there are not many, can trace the horizontal contours of cliffs, ridges and mountainsides."
That and this sort of thing has been around for years. Outside of of the cinema and within, take the angels in "Reign of Fire", I'm pretty sure I've even seen it in a bond flick. The Guinness Book of Records has something of it. Slow news day at /. HQ?
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
would it be possible to use an engine to turn these gliders into true flying suits? Similar to the Bell suit, but with real lift to allow it to fly for longer?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
In 1960 William Rankin ejected from his F8U Crusader jet at 48,000 feet and his parachute was ripped away in the jet stream. He traveled 150 miles and didn't come down for an hour. There are more stories like it here: http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffreading.html
Yeah, Here's a picture of a friend of mine jumping from a skyvan with one on:
http://leebert.org/skydive/jump2.jpg
Sad that the flash didn't fire as I expected. Would have been a great shot.
(I took up skydiving two summers ago... I finally actually finished AFF last summer. Hopefully will get my "A" license this spring, when it warms back up again.)
You joke about Soviet Russia, but when I was a paratrooper - many years ago - there were stories of how the Russians would drop airborne troops by flying very low and dropping them into to snow drifts.
Maybe they just told us that so we wouldn't bitch about how fast we hit the ground WITH parachutes... One thing the army taught me is that someone ALWAYS has it worse.
It appears that the suits are just trading vertical speed for horizontal speed. That might keep the flyer from making a crater in a field somewhere, but the human body won't tolerate a 100 MPH slide along the ground very well either. It might be possible to 'land' on a ski slope or a lake. But if the goal is to set down on flat ground, that speed will have to be reduced.
The aero folks get concerned with things like wing loading, drag and stall speed when figuring aircraft landing characteristics. The same would appear to apply here. Unfortunately, we already know what one suitable (no pun intended) glider configuration looks like that is safe for humans. It's a paraglider configuration. I don't think you can hang that much airfoil between your arms and legs.
Have gnu, will travel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug1rCyeNujU
It's disturbing. Extreme BASE jumpers like Corliss have friends die left and right, and they just keep on doing. They're clearly crazy, but I still find I that I have a certain respect for their commitment to pushing the limits.
Okay, fine. Then this guy can become the first to survive two jumps without a parachute.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }