According to someone I know who has done some skydiving, packing parachutes is kind of an expert job. You have to do it carefully to be sure they’ll work correctly, and people get paid a considerable amount to do it. Assuming that’s all true, it seems unlikely to me that a rock could get mixed up with the canopy. I suppose it’s probably still less unlikely than a meteor…
Skydivers: how likely is it that you might end up packing a rock in with your parachute?
I’ve seen jumpers packing chutes and while they are careful about it they often do it directly on the ground outside. I could easily see a stone finding it’s way into one of the folds of nylon. Maybe not a football sized one but a tennis ball sized one is not unimaginable.
Steinar Midstkogen, who did the video analysis, now says it was “a pebble, a few cm in size at most” (see my link in post # 39). Something that small could easily be packed into a parachute unnoticed. I always packed my own parachute- jumps were expensive enough without paying a packer $7-10 each time. I was pretty careful and in all my years of jumping (over 1000 jumps logged) I never had a malfunction and never had to use my reserve parachute. Even so, I could have overlooked a pebble that small, especially if I was packing outside on the ground.
Anecdote (yeah, I know): I heard about a guy who packed his parachute and was getting ready to board the plane but couldn’t find his altimeter (think over-sized wristwatch). He went up anyway and when he opened his parachute he saw his altimeter go tumbling by. It did not survive impact.
I laughed out loud at this.
As I suspected, it was a pebble packed in the parachute.
http://norskmeteornettverk.no/wordpress/?p=1497
I must say I’m amazed that anyone ever thought otherwise.
Edit: sorry, missed that this link had already been shared.
What new evidence does that link provide that we didn’t have before? Why is this the best theory now when it was only one of several before?
I’m not sure it’s new evidence so much as a fresh look at the old evidence, taking into consideration a couple of factors that weren’t taken into account before. Midtskogen now favors this theory because he has a plausible explanation for the rock’s speed which he didn’t have before. Here are some of Midtskogen’s statements, from Colophon’s link (the same link I included in post # 39):
That last sentence is a bit confusing to me, possibly due to the article being translated into English from the original Norwegian (or due to my own lack of comprehension) . I think the sentence would be more clear if it was punctuated like this:
It has been demonstrated that a pebble brought by the parachute can appear, falling rapidly, (not accelerating much) above the parachute a few seconds later.
So the new evidence is the 40 degree downward angle of the jumper in the wingsuit, placing the rock behind him, and the 250 degree rotation on opening (off-heading openings are very common) placing the jumper on a trajectory to intercept the rock. I don’t think an exact 180 degree rotation is necessary. The low mass and irregular shape of the rock combined with the turbulent wake of the wingsuit could throw the rock off.
Unlikely? Sure. But as Midtskogen himself says: