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Man flies over English Channel to France with out Airplane!

Evidently, due to poor visibility he couldn't see the French coast until the last few minutes of the dive/flight -- that's when you find out how big your teabags are: when you look out of the plane and realize that you have to rely entirely on your self-designed preparation. That takes some real intestinal fortitude.
 
Ha, well, he's making a bigger one, so who knows, this might be the next craze.

I'll wager we see this thing in the next Bond movie. That will be slick stuff....:D

D
 
Maybe President Bush, 41 could use the carbon fiber wings for his next sky dive. His goal for his 85th birthday is to accomplish his 2nd skydive!
 
very very sweet. i think the last Bond film had 2 big skydiving scenes, but you're right, i bet they'll put this in the next one.
 
Totally unrelated but interesting fact - if humans ever live on the moon and make a big enough space, like a dome, you could strap wings to your arms and fly like a bird because the gravity would be low enough.

This is very cool and I really hope he manages more jumps and improvements.

D
 
Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Totally unrelated but interesting fact - if humans ever live on the moon and make a big enough space, like a dome, you could strap wings to your arms and fly like a bird because the gravity would be low enough.

This is very cool and I really hope he manages more jumps and improvements.

D
Click to expand...


Yeah the dome would need some type of air atleast.

How about this, I get some sort of sheilding and I glide into earth on one of those type things... that would be sweet.
 
Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Totally unrelated but interesting fact - if humans ever live on the moon and make a big enough space, like a dome, you could strap wings to your arms and fly like a bird because the gravity would be low enough.
Click to expand...

I wonder if you'd even need wings or if you could swim in the air. Anyway, the wings you'd strap on wouldn't have to be very big.
 
I think that the wings would be a great assist on the moon. Wonder what will be his next use of the wings?
 
Originally posted by IJ Reilly
I'm surprised that the purists would call this skydiving. It looks a lot more like hang gliding to me.
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At the speeds he was going, its not hang gliding, more like speed gliding. If he manages to set up a wing system thats deployable like Buz Lightyear, you could jump out of a plane get into free fall, extend the wings and pull out of a dive into a glide. It would be a rush!

D
 
I think that his persuit of this sport is the enjoyment that he gets from the rush of adrenalin. The thrill of this extreme sports becomes very addicting!
 
Also, thinking on this a bit. Military applications for special forces would be huge. You'd be able to do an insertion of a team 20+ miles away from the landing zone, so the plane carrying the troops wouldn't be flagged (maybe) as a threat.

Cool stuff....:D

D
 
Originally posted by Abstract
Pretty cool, but is the red/orange "flame" coming out of his feet completely PS work?
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Nah, its a piece of fabric attached to his shoe to look like flame. Its blurred in the pic cause its flapping.

D
 
I can see where this would be great for the military. It would definitely need to have a camouflage effect. It would also need the ability to be folded so it can be hiden from the enemy!
 
Think night, think black, think radar absorbing, think stealth.

It could be huge......:D

D
 
Am I the only one who saw this guy on the Stunt Awards? He raced a plane like 20 miles and was just able to beet the plane in the end. This wing idea is great. It means you can stay in the air longer. Which is a huge plus for sky divers. Also sky diving sports are really starting to take off where divers race around tennis balls with streamers and see who makes the most trips around and other games. This sounds like the most fun sport of them all. True racing for not only speed but distance also. It's a fine balance that one would have to make to figure just how much they should dive to achieve the greatest distance.
 
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