Skydiving
The sport of jumping from an airplane and parachuting to the ground
The 120,000-Foot Leap
Can space-diver Felix Baumgartner break the sound barrier without breaking his neck?
July 2012 |
By Mark Betancourt
Duck!
Even helping Jeb Corliss looks scary. Here’s the master of the wingsuit doing his thing in close proximity to canyon walls, as seen from multiple camera angles.
September 05, 2011 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Parachuteless Freaks
On March 23, 1944, a British Lancaster bomber over Germany's Ruhr River took heavy flak and exploded. As his oxygen mask and goggles began to melt, and his flight suit burned, tail gunner Nick Alkemade heard the pilot ordering the crew to bail out.The aircraft was at 18,000 feet, and while Alkemade...
April 26, 2011 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Skydiving Over Google Earth
Awesome. I love the little blast of air they get at around the 48-second mark.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmxM_CknSZw
December 14, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Jump. Fly. Land.
Jeb Corliss says if the birds can do it, so can he.
November 2010 |
By Carl Hoffman
Red Bull Jump Takes Giant Step Backward
On Tuesday, the energy drink giant Red Bull said it was postponing its Stratos effort, in which Felix Baumgartener will try to break Joe Kittinger's 1960 free-fall record, until a lawsuit is settled. Courthouse News Service reported in April that Daniel Hogan was suing Red Bull for stealing his Spa...
October 14, 2010 |
By Pat Trenner
Stand up, sit down, fall off
It's not new material, but if you haven't seen this, you owe it to yourself to take a couple minutes to watch. Austrian skydiver Paul Steiner did some ambitious wing walking earlier this year in this Red Bull video, with a pair of Blanix gliders flown by Ewald Roithner and Kurt Tippi high above the...
August 30, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
Batman (well, Squirrelman)
Skydiving is turning into skygliding—who wants to fall like a stone when you can fly like a bird? Or, we should say, a bat...well, most accurately, a flying squirrel.In recent years, with the help of special suits that incorporate webbing from the wrists to the ankles and between the legs, skydiver...
June 16, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
A Diving Rate
The United States Parachute Association has released the good news that 2009 marked the lowest skydiving fatality rate for one year in almost half a century: 16 deaths in nearly three million jumps by over 32,000 USPA members at 220 drop zones across the U.S. Of those three million, 400,000 were by...
February 12, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
Flights & Fancy: When Pigs Fly
An ingenious new use for an old Cessna.
January 2002 |
By Richard Sassaman
