Monday, July 12, 2010

Brave and crazy.

I'm sure everybody's seen video of insane wingsuit action in the fjords of Norway:



So what do you do when jumping off cliffs and skimming past sheer rock walls at suicidal velocities just isn't delivering the ol' adrenaline rush like it used to?

Simple!

Strap bladders of JP-4 jet fuel to your body under your clothes, bolt a pair of turbojets to your boots, and jump out of a balloon!



The number of ways that could go horribly, tragically, pyrotechnically wrong literally staggers the imagination. And yet it's kinda cool, too.

22 comments:

og said...

I wonder if you can get one of those suits in 4xl?

Wingspan would probably have to be jumbo-jet size.

Carteach said...

Within a week, someone will strap a frikkin laser on it and declare world domination. You just watch.

Anonymous said...

My favorite kludge is the hot water bottle full of jet fuel.

Anonymous said...

Dude is fearless, I'll give him that. But as long as they still have to depend on 200+ year old tech to get 'em off the ground, I'm mostly impressed by the stoopid.

And myself, I'll just wait for my Jetson suit.

AT

Les Jones said...

That's one of the things I swore had to be fake until I saw like half a dozen of those videos. Crazy.

bedlamite said...

The largest model engine turbines are about 50 lbs of thrust. Add one more turbine to each arm and you could produce greater than 1:1 thrust to weight ratio :)

Anonymous said...

Awwww...c'mon, Tam,

Ya know ya just wanta try that wingsuit biz. Skimming cliff faces at fingertip length? As good as an afternoon of touchuing off .577 Nitro doubles!!!

Now about Finlanders. One must appreciate what Finnish winters do to the human psyche, before one can appreciate that adding jetfuel is a logical progression of the mental-relief seeking mechanisms, that ordinarily are fueled by vodka. One combustible substituted foranohter,so to speak.

there's a Finnish mystery writer or two that provide keen insight in the darkness. "Well, a lot of murders involve a pukko. A bunch of guys were standing around in the snow drinking, and passing a knife around, and then it winds up fatally stuck in one of them. All of their finger prints are on it and nobody can remember what happened."

John,the Red...and half Nordski

Anonymous said...

"Add one more turbine to each arm and you could produce greater than 1:1 thrust"

Visions of Wile E. Coyote sporing unbiden to mind. Especially the out of fuel part.

Joel said...

Just don't look down, and you'll continue to levitate.

Anonymous said...

I hate flying in a damn airplane.
Nutz! Completely nutz!
This would do me in, but I wanna try it!

Jake (formerly Riposte3) said...

Is anyone else thinking about the possible military applications for something like this, or that jet-wing backpack that guy used to cross the English Channel a few years ago? If a hobbyist can do this with off-the-shelf parts, then I bet Lockheed's Skunkworks could turn out something that could easily support a paratrooper's load for covert insertions.

I wonder what his radar cross-section was, and whether a SAM could hit a man-sized target or not.

wv: comontry. Comontry it, it's fun!

Anonymous said...

That had the feel of a hold my vodka and watch this Tula momment.

The "self sealing fuel bladders" strapped to the belly were a nice touch.

Gerry

T said...

I'll agree that it could go horribly wrong, but it wouldn't be tragic unless he landed on an unsuspecting pedestrian. You don't get tragedy when the foreseeable consequences of your poor decisions catch up with you.

Tam said...

So a flaming dude plummeting through the roof of a daycare center would qualify?

Anonymous said...

The spirit that drives these guys must be similar to that spirit driving those intrepid aviators flying pre-1914 biplanes--and more than a few of those left over from the Great War as well.

cap'n chumbucket

Bubblehead Les. said...

Any bets on whether Hamas will try to rig one of these up to get across the border? Don't laugh! They've tried Scuba, Hang gliding, tunneling, submersibles and other weird crap before.

Cargosquid said...

In regards to HAMAS, I wonder if the radar on a Phalanx CIWS would pick them up........messy.

Jenny said...

That... is awesome....

okay, one more for the "something to try someday" file. After all the other stuff though, to make sure the most of it actually gets done before dying in a fiery kinetic mess. :)

Matt G said...

My daughter and I have agreed to do this, someday, if the technology increases. Flying is a very common dream to us.

LawDog said...

Yves Rossy

He ain't sane, but he's happy.

Anonymous said...

I'll bet somewhere someone working in spec ops watched that and said, "huh. No sh*t."

As for RCS... The engines and his helmet, mostly. Now if a single screw sticking up a thread or two will cause an F-117's RCS to bloom, it is probably Enough. I doubt the engines put out enough heat to attract a heater, but something like CIWS could probably track it ok.

Jim

Geodkyt said...

Jim,

You know -- they (both SOCOM and the gnomes in CIA) do that EVERY James Bond movie that comes out.

A surprising amount of that stuff finds a modified application in real world stuff. (Of course, most of it ends up being lookded at and rejected, too. But some gems sneak through.)