BlogIssues

Jumping off planes and skydiving aren’t a novelty anymore and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide engage in this extreme sport for lots of different reasons. Mainly though because of the massive adrenaline rush I guess.

Some people are taking it even further though, hoping to jump off a plane without a parachute and survive!

“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.”

Jeb Corliss is one of many who plans to jump off a plane in a specially designed and made wing suit and land without parachute. He wants to do all of this and counts on surviving.

He plans to land on a specially designed runway of his own design. It will borrow from the principles of Nordic ski jumping and will cost about $2 million

Maria von Egidy is a wing suit maker from South Africa and she thinks that “people will recognize this makes sense”. Right. So Corliss wants to start preparing for his big jump in his wing suit this spring.

On the question as to why he wants to put his life at risk:

“Because everybody thinks that it’s not possible,”

The point is to show people anything can be done. If you want to do amazing things, then you have to take amazing risks.”

Nutcases doing the flying squirrel [New York Times]

The wing suit in action: “Flying Dude” Loïc Jean-Albert of France: