At some point when playing Portal we have all set up in infinite drop scenario by placing a portal on the ceiling and another portal directly under it, in the game its easy to break the cycle by simply stepping out onto the floor.
Got me wondering though if by power of plot someone was silly enough to do this ‘in real life’ without fancy shock-absorbing boots how could they save themselves? They’d be dropping at terminal velocity of 120 mph approx, I’m struggling to think of a scenario where they could break the cycle without breaking a lot of bones.
Assuming no outside interference would it be possible?
Thinking with portals, I’d say as you’re falling, take the hole you’ve put on the ceiling. Put it somewhere else on the ground. Entering the ground portal, you’ll shoot upwards out of the other portal until you run out of speed. At this point you’ll have gained significant height*. Deploy your parachute. Presto!
*Extrapolating from one of the posts here seems to get it at 150m.
Say the blue portal is on the ceiling and the orange one is on the floor to start with. Shoot the blue portal on the floor next to the orange one. Then, after you fly up out of the blue portal towards the ceiling, shoot an orange portal on the ceiling. Don’t miss!
(Once you’ve lost enough momentum, shoot your blue portal somewhere else to avoid falling into a second infinite loop.)
You could put your slow-down portals just outside the room where you made the loop, someplace with a higher ceiling.
And it wouldn’t work in the game, but you should be able to slow down to safety with just two floor portals, no parachute required: You’ll oscillate between the two, shooting out of one and then falling back to shoot out of the other, but eventually, air resistance would slow you down.
In Portal 2 you shoot your ceiling portal somewhere that would fling you into one of those transport beams. They seem to soak up all the momentum you enter them with.
