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[Doc Chase]

Right, because we don't have hydraulic jacks that can absorb a 12m fall like it was nothing.

Well yes, but the fixed wing suit in current use (which is awesome) that flew across the Channel was rolling at about 125mph when he pulled the cord. I'm thinking if you want to wingsuit it or use one of these fabulous jetpacks, you'd need a lot more surface area (or some really fine motor control to use the engines to bleed off the momentum). Hangliders have a decent surface area to be able to use the air resistance to drop speeds.

[Smokeskin]

Forward velocity doesn't negate any g force, so really the falling speed of a dead drop in one of these should be the same as the falling speed when gliding at 3:1. There might be a bit of lift created (like in an airplane) through the forward momentum, but that would be fairly minimal from the look of the suit. That's why I said 30-35 on a dead drop as opposed to the 25.

I have no idea what you're talking about. What I was describing was how to reduce your forward velocity - landing with 62 mph of forward velocity would be seriously bad news. The g forces was the vertical deceleration used to brake.

[Karoline]

Ah, sorry, only kinda glanced over your post. Would be easy to move yourself to a deadfall some 500-1000m above the target. I'd also imagine you could bleed alot of your horizontal movement without going into a full fledged plummet. I mean, they are mostly used for maneuverability as well as increased fall time. Still, it is something to consider, it'd be hard to glide right up to the landing point unless there is a really good way to air break.

[Aaron]

Ah, sorry, only kinda glanced over your post. Would be easy to move yourself to a deadfall some 500-1000m above the target. I'd also imagine you could bleed alot of your horizontal movement without going into a full fledged plummet. I mean, they are mostly used for maneuverability as well as increased fall time. Still, it is something to consider, it'd be hard to glide right up to the landing point unless there is a really good way to air break.

Luckily, there is a really good way to air-brake: the parachute. =i)

[nezumi]

Couldn't you just... aim up at the last minute? That converts speed into altitude, but without the speed, you quickly stall and fall back to the ground. If you start pulling up a few dozen meters away, then you should fall back right on target. Granted, doesn't sound especially safe or comfortable, but better than augering in at 62 mph.

[Smokeskin]

Read my post, the wingsuit would have to able to brake with 6g of force in order to pull it off.

I've done 8 parachute jumps, and even with that, stalling is far from easy - and here you're doing less than 20 mph forward speed, very little vertical, and you have a very large surface to work with. Trying to stall at wingsuit speeds, at 62 mph forward and 25 mph vertical, timing that so you don't stall too early and build up lethal vertical speed, or too late so you hit at huge forward speed - even if you had the control surface to let you generate 6g of deceleration, timing it would be such a close thing that it would be next to impossible.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Yeah... Definitely not something that I would want to try myself... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Karoline]

Yeah... Definitely not something that I would want to try myself... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

But if you were wearing milspec armor with hydraulic jacks maybe...? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

But if you were wearing milspec armor with hydraulic jacks maybe...? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Only after it had been over-engineered to crazy levels I would imagine... I have a hard enough time justifying jumping out of a perfectly good airplane as it is... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Karoline]

Only after it had been over-engineered to crazy levels I would imagine... I have a hard enough time justifying jumping out of a perfectly good airplane as it is... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Skydiving: A sport that involves jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and hoping that your parachute is just as perfectly good.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Skydiving: A sport that involves jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and hoping that your parachute is just as perfectly good.

Which is why I don't Skydive... Too much worry there...

[Smokeskin]

A skydive jump is about as dangerous as driving to and from work for a week. And that's here in Denmark, the US has a 2-3 times higher car accident death rate per capita iirc. In the air, with a main and a reserve chute, you don't have a single point of failure, and you're not reliant on others to not be drunk, see your brake lights, not run a red light, etc.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

A skydive jump is about as dangerous as driving to and from work for a week. And that's here in Denmark, the US has a 2-3 times higher car accident death rate per capita iirc. In the air, with a main and a reserve chute, you don't have a single point of failure, and you're not reliant on others to not be drunk, see your brake lights, not run a red light, etc.

And yet there are news reports of Skydivers drilling into the ground because of a faulty parachute every year... happens multiple times a year actually... I had a Civilian Friend, and a Military friend, who both died because of Chute Failures. Sorry, that is too much for me for a Sport that is supposed to be fun. I find no fun in fearing for my life every time I jump out of a plane.

I do understand rationally that there are fewer deaths per year within the Skydiving Community than there is in the Driving Community. It is just that I do not want to worry about death while I am supposed to be having fun... I know, I am a bit crazy, but that is okay, there are a lot of people there with me when it comes to Skydiving. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

When I jump out of a perfectly functional flying craft, I prefer being attached by at least a Rope... of course, I had some pretty good training doing that in the Military, so... there you go...

[Smokeskin]

Hey, I'm scared shitless of spiders. I used to smoke, which is probably the most dangerous thing you can do. We're not big on rationality us humans.

And if you lost friends to it, I totally get it. I'm just saying that statistically, it is quite a safe sport, and I would never jump without a reserve chute.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Hey, I'm scared shitless of spiders. I used to smoke, which is probably the most dangerous thing you can do. We're not big on rationality us humans.

And if you lost friends to it, I totally get it. I'm just saying that statistically, it is quite a safe sport, and I would never jump without a reserve chute.

Understood... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Smokeskin]

Ok I worded that weirdly - statistically, parachuting is quite a safe sport. The numbers cover both people that jump with a reserve chute and people that just have a main, and deaths to malfunctions are pretty much isolated to the latter. I'd never jump without a reserve.

[Aaron]

Couldn't you just... aim up at the last minute? That converts speed into altitude, but without the speed, you quickly stall and fall back to the ground. If you start pulling up a few dozen meters away, then you should fall back right on target. Granted, doesn't sound especially safe or comfortable, but better than augering in at 62 mph.

Sorta kinda not really. First off, you're gliding, not flying. Your flight isn't powered; your thrust is generated by falling through the air. As soon as you try to pitch upward, your lift-to-drag ratio drops, and so do you. In order for a glider to go upward, it needs to be in a place where the air is rising faster than it is falling through that air (I think that's called soaring, but I may be thinking of something else).

Here's an experiment to try. You know those paper airplanes that do loops? They do loops because they have a powered flight (you throw them, creating an outside source of thrust). Find a nice high-ish place and, rather than throwing it, drop it into the air and see if it loops at all.

[nezumi]

Well my intention is to drop airspeed so you can land at a reasonable speed. Without altering the control surfaces, you can reduce speed by gliding for a long time on the vertical (gradually losing speed to friction), or you can exchange speed for altitude. If you exchange speed for altitude, at your new altitude your speed is less - which reduces lift. Hence, you can drop that altitude quicker. The long-term goal though isn't to gain altitude, it's to lose speed. If 70 degrees is too steep a climb for the glider to make it, go instead for a forty degree climb. Any climb saps speed. Freefall dropping is alright as long as you're close enough to your target. 9.8 m/s^2 takes a while to reach 62 mph.

Obviously, trying to exchange speed for altitude, then fighting a faster rate of drop would be extremely hard to do manually. But I can't imagine it would be so hard to program a computer the size of a cell phone, with appropriate sensors, to do the heavy lifting for you. Denote where you want to land, it measures the altitudes, air speeds, sheers and so on, and you let it do the work.

[Smokeskin]

Well my intention is to drop airspeed so you can land at a reasonable speed. Without altering the control surfaces, you can reduce speed by gliding for a long time on the vertical (gradually losing speed to friction), or you can exchange speed for altitude.

No and no.

Losing speed to friction: This is an airfoil. If you lose speed, you lose lift and drop faster (unless you've been diving into the fall of course). You need forward velocity to get lift.

Exchanging speed for altitude: A wingsuit doesn't have thrust and doesn't have the lift. You're never going to be going upwards in one of these things.

[nezumi]

I feel as though we are talking past each other. You do know my stated intent is to get the craft on the ground, yes? i.e. down? So losing lift is okay, as long as your rate of fall + your speed is still lower than 62 mph.

A wingsuit may not have lift, but 1) I don't care if the craft actually goes up, just that it slows down and 2) thrust is not the same as speed. If I'm going at 100 mph and aim upwards at 30 degrees, I will lose speed faster than I was before, but I will go upwards. This is very basic physics. It may not apply the same way to parachuting, but that's because a parachute isn't a wingsuit.

[Redcrow]

Modern Marvels is one of the best shows on t.v. and definitely one of my favorites. About a year ago I watched an episode dedicated to Magnets and learned that they can actually magnetize plastic, though currently only in a very controlled environment. I was truly amazed at how ubiquitous magnets were in our technology and can only imagine the possibilities of using magnetized plastic instead of the rare earth elements we use today.

[Raven the Tricks...]

Has anyone had any luck trying to find this particular episode online? So far my search-fu has failed, I can find just about any other episode, but not this one.

[Karoline]

Has anyone had any luck trying to find this particular episode online? So far my search-fu has failed, I can find just about any other episode, but not this one.

Well, it only just recently aired, and History Channel doesn't generally put its shows up for free (to my knowledge), so you might have trouble finding it. They might do a rerun of it though, could look through their schedule and see if they are going to show it again.

[Raven the Tricks...]

Actually if you search it originally aired back in late December 2008, so that was a rerun. And I don't get history channel at the moment so I'm sol catching it on tv, hence the question.

[Smokeskin]

If I'm going at 100 mph and aim upwards at 30 degrees, I will lose speed faster than I was before, but I will go upwards. This is very basic physics. It may not apply the same way to parachuting, but that's because a parachute isn't a wingsuit.

If you're going 100 mph in a horizontal direction, and you aim 30 degrees upwards, you will still be moving at 100 mph in a horizontal direction. Your velocity vector doesn't change with facing. What does change is the forces that work on you from airflow, and that can change your velocity. Since you are not able to generate lift (ie the upward component of the forces from airflow) of a larger magnitude than gravity, you are not able to generate any acceleration in an upwards direction - so you have no way of going upwards.

Doing the force/acceleration vectors and seeing how that affects velocity vectors is basic physics. It applies equally to parachutes and wingsuits (and any other object for that matter).

I don't know how you reached the conclusion that you'd go upwards by changing facing. Do you think that changing your facing will change the direction of movement in the same way?