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Imagine 120,000 feet, on board an orbiting spacecraft, and the door is open. There’s a red light at the door, and someone is counting down. At “0” the light turns to green and you hurl yourself out
of the door
into space.
You have on a specially equipped suit that helps you to fall, gracefully, to Earth — and you do it for fun. Gizmodo says:
Orbital Outfitters, run by Rick Tumlinson, a longtime civilian space booster who founded the Space Frontier Foundation, and Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon, has already started to develop the equipment it thinks is needed to achieve the feat. Clark, whose wife Laurel perished in 2003’s Columbia disaster, believes that the smaller the body is attempting re-entry, the less the chance it has of breaking up – hence the thinking behind space dives being used for NASA emergencies.
Falling to Earth would have you traveling over 2,500 miles per hour. Approaching the outer atmosphere, you would engage your drogue chute, which would bring you down to a more manageable 120mph. Finally, a more traditional chute would be deployed, bringing you to a soft landing.
Then it’s back up again. But up may not be such a problem either, with Japan expected to start development of its space elevator sometime in 2018.
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This is easily one of the coolest ideas ever… Although, presuming you make it through reentry without bursting into a million 2500mph pieces, how can you actually ensure that you’ll land anywhere near where you want to be?! I’m all for trying, but if I think landing in the middle of the Indian Ocean would be somewhat problematic.
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I shared this idea with my students today. They said, “You go first, Mrs. AtLee.” I love kids!