Jeb Corliss is one of a number of people competing to be the first person to jump out of a plane without a parachute:
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All of this is technically possible,” said Jean Potvin, a physics professor at Saint Louis University and skydiver who performs 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.”
*Flying Squirrel gallery after the jump …*
Loïc Jean-Albert of France, better known as Flying Dude in a popular YouTube video, put it more bluntly: “You might do it well one time and try another time and crash and die.”
The landing, as one might expect, poses the biggest hurdle, and each group has a different approach. Most will speak in only the vaguest terms out of fear that someone will steal their plans.
This spring, Corliss will attempt the first of three tests to prepare for his goal. Wearing his wing suit, he will jump from a plane, which will then execute a 270-degree turn and descend in a steep angle. He will fly down to the plane and re-enter it. This will be his second attempt at the benchmark. His first failed when he missed the plane; he deployed his parachute and glided safely to earth.
“The plane was flying too fast,” said Corliss, who gained a degree of notoriety in April 2006 when the police arrested him after he was stopped from jumping off the Empire State Building’s observation deck. A judge dismissed the charges.
Wing suits are not new; they have captured the imagination of storytellers since man dreamed of flying. From Icarus to Wile Coyote, who crashed into a mesa on his attempt, the results have usually been disastrous.
But the suits’ practical use began to take hold in the early 1990s, when a modern version created by Patrick de Gayardon proved safer and led to rapid innovation.
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 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.
Corliss said he could land safely at about 120 m.p.h. To protect his neck, he said he would attach his helmet to a rigid-framed exoskeleton with the wing suit.
“Is there some crazy person out there who might beat me because he’s willing to do something more dangerous than me?” Corliss said. “Yes, but I’m not that guy.”
Corliss has plenty of experience jumping from high places. A BASE jumper — someone who leaps from buildings and cliffs and lands with a parachute — he has made more than 1,000 jumps, including from the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge.
He was encouraged by the response to his plans from Vertigo Inc., an aerospace company in Lake Elsinore, California, that has worked on projects for NASA and the United States military.
Matt Higgins, “Flying humans, hoping to land with no chute ,” International Herald Tribune, December 10th 2007.
And:
– about B.A.S.E. jumping.