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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/28/skydiver-luke-aikins-jump-without-parachute-live-tv
"He's made 18,000 parachute jumps, helped train some of the world's most elite skydivers, done some of the stunts for Ironman 3. But the plunge Luke Aikins knows he'll be remembered for is the one he's making without a parachute. Or a wingsuit.
Or anything, really, other than the clothes he'll be wearing when he jumps out of an airplane at 25,000 feet [7600 m] this weekend, attempting to become the first person to land safely on the ground in a net."
[...] "To me, I'm proving that we can do stuff that we don't think we can do if we approach it the right way," he answers.
"I've got 18,000 jumps with a parachute, so why not wear one this time?" he muses almost to himself. "But I'm trying to show that it can be done."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday July 29 2016, @05:53PM
There was a guy here, not too long ago, who wanted to set some record or other in a wing suit. More than 2000 successful flights. He swore he only flew when it was safe. But each new record meant only that an even riskier one had to be broken. The day came, the weather was just slightly off - some light fog near the ground - for some reason he jumped anyway. Inside one of those pockets of mist, he wrapped himself around a rock. He was newly married - what a great honeymoon present for the wife.
So here we have another parachutist and base jumper. After thousands of jumps, and plenty of new records, he no longer gets the kick out of it he wants. Time to up the risk again. Why are we supposed to be impressed, exactly?
Adrenaline junkies are addicts like any other. They don't deserve respect or publicity. Maybe sadness, not for them, but for their friends, family and the poor sots who have to mop their remains off the rocks.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @06:13PM
So much better to be a nameless normie doing utterly boring and normal things. I don't care for their activities, but I won't pass judgment on them either; they're certainly not cowards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @06:14PM
Did the guy have kids? If not, will you submit him to http://www.darwinawards.com/ [darwinawards.com]?
Let the problem take care of itself, remove all safety labels!
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday July 29 2016, @07:36PM
Adrenaline junkies also break sound barriers, are the first to space, are the first to experience what the human body can handle. Yes, the probability of living to 80 is fairly low, but that's not a reason to give such harsh judgment against them.
I doubt Chuck Yeager felt as you do, and not all adrenaline junkies are also unsafe. Being an old astronaut is actually a thing now.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @08:15PM
The human species can tolerate a lot more males dying than females. So guys doing risky things at their limits or beyond can actually be good for the species. It may explain why so many guys (especially the younger ones) get the urge to push limits in risky ways. If they succeed and breed, the gene pool may get some of their attributes - which might be better than average, and thus help improve the species. If they die then they weren't good enough. If they get permanently crippled they might be less likely to breed successfully.
That's probably why there's a gender imbalance in certain classes of youtube videos ( some successes end up in "humans are awesome" videos, failures in "fail compilation videos", really bad fails in "WARNING: This video may be disturbing to some viewers." ;) ).
Some may say it's bad because those guys are stupid or foolish and their genes end up in the pool, but there are plenty of fairly successful stupid species around so that's not necessarily a big problem for the species as a whole. It may turn out that certain bacteria would still be better at being space-faring species than humans. With all our supposed brains we haven't actually been making that much progress on that front and might actually take huge leaps backwards instead (global nuclear war etc).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday July 29 2016, @09:06PM
This isn't about adrenaline. It's a tech demo for a really good net. Maybe it could be used in space missions.
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