Terminal Velocity
BASE Jumping scares the hell out of me. But like many things that scare me — extreme skiing, deep water soloing, elevators full of blood — I enjoy watching it from the safety of a screen. And recently it’s gotten pretty interesting: There are now some remarkable things happening in the sport, mostly as a result of flying-squirrel-like jumping outfits called “wingsuits.”
The flat-out craziest, however, is the effort to jump out of a plane in one of these suits and land, without the benefit of a parachute. As Jeb Corliss explains in this video on nyt.com, the appeal is a combination of limit-seeking and Iccarus complex: “This will be the first time that a human being has reached terminal velocity and landed on their face, at over 110 miles an hour, and gotten up and done it again. You know, that’s a very special thing.”
This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Outdoor Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 10th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Alex
Here’s something along the same lines. Check the link out. The “wing suit” has taken base jumping to a whole different dimension.
Enjoy
John
http://www.biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=4262
December 11th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Hi John,
Yeah, that film (linked above under \”remarkable things\”) is pretty damn hype. I can\’t help feeling that it treads a bit over the line between incredible and insane… But I confess I\’m still impressed by people like Chuck Yeager and the test pilots with \”the right stuff\” who continue to push the limits of possibility. Though far too risky for my taste, it\’s awfully impressive…
Cheers,
Alex