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 …* Continue reading →

In 1975, Boris Popov was in a glider accident.

“As I fell, I became most angry at my inability to do something,” Popov explained. “I had time to throw a parachute. I knew they existed but they hadn’t yet been introduced to the hang gliding community.” This event led Popov to invent the whole-aircraft parachute system and to found Ballistic Recovery Systems (BRS) in 1980.

The firm claims “BRS has sold more than 25

,000 of its parachute systems and has saved more than 199 lives. In 2004, the FAA and EASA both certified a BRS parachute system for the Cessna 182 to go along with the 172 certification

. The companies’ products are sold worldwide.”

Here’s a series of stills taken by NASA of Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS):

Ballistic Recovery Systems

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What we don’t know much about is the details of dropping cargo by parachute: accuracy, limits, safety to personnel on the ground.