Well, jumping without a parachute would certainly be cheaper since new gear can easily cost $5,000 or more!
What Aikins did is impressive, but I wouldn’t try it in a million years- and I have no problem jumping with a parachute.
It was a 100’ x 100’ net suspended 200’ above the ground. I believe I counted just the four corners suspended by cranes.
:rolleyes:
I’m gonna nominate this post for a Darwin Award.
Was there risk involved? Yes, but the risk was as carefully managed as possible and in the end that management was dead fucking on target. That’s kind of the opposite of winning a Darwin Award, is my point.
If there was a quarry at the bottom, I shall defer to your expertise on the matter.
This guy sounds like a candidate for a Darwin Award.
I gotta agree with AskNott; this really was a, “Here, hold my beer” type of stunt. Yes, it was planned out over a long time but the precision needed to hit a target that (relatively) small over that distance only allow for microns of a degree off between success & being a human pancake. If you watch the landing, he was relatively close to one edge of the net.
Having crowds & live TV is only additional pressure to have a “GO” decision if the conditions were marginal.
I think he deserves a Darwin Honorable Mention for the sheer stupidity of it.
I’m curious about the other guys who jumped with him…
One of them was the photographer, but what about the other two?
What was their role?
Cleanup if he missed the net?
I’d guess if he were off target, they’d have grabbed him but once it was clear he was on target they popped their chutes.
I do not know the factual answers, but after having watched a great-in-detail docum on National Geo channel last night, I can inform that, IIRC, one of the asst-jumpers was his cousin. I am pretty darn sure I heard that mentioned, but no actual cite, sorry. IIRC, it was that cousin-jumper who took the O2-mask from him ~half-way down.
I’ll throw out a guess that the dive could have been done just the same with just two asst-jumpers, but redundancy or having an extra person in case of eqpt problem or other non-zero chance of an “UH-OH” moment and another jumper taking over seems reasonable to me. Or maybe the third guy functioned as an ‘overseer’ to help remind/affirm when certain things HAD to be done - call him their Air Traffic Control guy, or most likely a combo of both of the above.
Another thing learned from that show worth mentioning, and can be noticed happening in slow-mo vids of net at landing : the four suspension lines (one from each of the individual four cranes) were each hooked to a oft-used-in-Hollywood stuntstuff (per narrarator) piece of eqpt that would allow the speed of Aikins’ deceleration from net to be varied over a small period of time.Purpose was that such was used to help keep the impact G-forces from his decelerating to a full-stop as slow/lengthy as possible, or at least variying such to stay within rates known to be within safe-enough parameters, etc.
The net itself (or the four wires holding it, per se) was released by, IIRC, his brother (uncle??) pushing a button upon the ‘control station’ for the net/suspension system just moments before impact, so Aikins fell into a net that was already falling (or at least reistance-free from falling) somewhat. Then the cable-tensioner thingies adjusted rate of cable speed decelerating until full-stop achieved. Pretty cool learning how they did this (probably significant) event in the overall steps taken from jump to touching ground again.
In re: to the SAG initially saying he must wear a chute then changing decision just minutes before his jump… The show had interior-of-plane footage showing the four getting ready, reviewing and quadrruple-checking, etc, as plane climbed. Up until around 10k’ (IIRC) or, well on the way up anyways, Aikins was seen wearing the chute. Then he and team got word of decision change, and next time the interior-view was shown, the chute was gone. 
That is how close the SAG’s reversal was to him/team actually leaving the jump-plane, fwiw.
You know there will be others to follow in his footsteps, so this new endeavor will need a catchy name. What about…Splatdiving!?
Aikins’ YouTube channel has some info, including this video which shows the light system he used to stay lined up with the net. The lights turn red to tell him he’s off track and which direction.
So he cheated with the light system.
And the Apollo 11 crew cheated by using computers.
Outstanding!
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Mr. Aikins was continually adjusting his course so the notion that “microns of a degree off between success & being a human pancake” is unsupported. If he was on a set trajectory that couldn’t be adjusted after he left the plane, you’d have a point but that wasn’t the case here.
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He was only “relatively close to one edge” in the sense that he wasn’t dead center.
The only way this deserves a Darwin Award is if it was done by an idiot with no planning who still thought it would work.
Things that you think are a dumb idea that never-the-less work out exactly as planned don’t win Darwin Awards; that’s not what they are about.
It’s not apocryphal - it happened in North Carolina when we we living there :(.
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1988-04-05/news/0030130213_1_wear-a-parachute-sky-diver-mcguire
Double-ninjaed… by the next two posts after the original! Same link even.
We actually saw the footage on the evening news. Pretty freaky.
There are some “sports” which are VERY dangerous - in theory. Yes one might get killed but if one is trained, equipped, and experienced - the danger is minimal and is offset by the amazing experience. Plus most such sports require some sort of certification.
For example:
Surfing on the north shore of Hawaii with those massive 3 story waves.
Going down a double diamond ski slope.
Heli-skiing.
Wing suit jumping.
Hang gliding.
Scuba diving - not the easy kind in shallow water but the diving in caves, with sharks, in wrecks, under ice, or going deep or where one needs extra tanks and special precautions.
Kayaking in dangerous rivers.
Mountain climbing.
That is cool.
Travis Pastrana jumped without a shoot a while ago, video here. But he didn’t land in a net.
Not sure which is stupider*.
Slee
*Stupid as in the ‘You are freaking crazy’.
It says in this link that his wife brought his four-year-old son to this event. Okay, everything went fine, great. But. If it hadn’t, can you imagine the trauma to his kid?
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/07/31/luke-aikins-no-parachute_n_11288992.html