 Say, what’s the closest thing you’ve done next to flying?
If you’re going to talk about rollercoasters and airplanes and bungee jumping, that could never count as an experience of flight. This experience will only come closer with the least contraptions you have to aid your flight. And sitting inside an airplane, riding on a descending rollercoaster, bungee jumping, all these activities can never be truly closer to simulate the experience of flight.
With sky diving, flying comes close. It is the only airborne activity where your body is the flying instrument; therefore it IS flying in a sense. Except to go back up, anyone can do just anything a bird can do. Travel laterally? Of course you can. Barrel rolls, somersaults, swooping dives, anyone can glide and soar like any bird in flight. A surging interest, the tracking jump, is a sky diving where the intention is to maximize horizontal speed while minimizing vertical speed. It really is flying but without gaining altitude.
Flying on Terminal Velocity
How do they do that?
This is due to the fact that when a falling body reaches Terminal Velocity, it won’t be accelerating anymore, having gained a steady momentum once the atmospheric drag (or the air resistance) and the weight of the body becomes equal and opposite. And at terminal velocity, the falling sensation disappears, the ‘stomach in your throat’ feeling. This is where the sky diver gets familiarity with the experience. At Terminal Velocity, it will be easier to perform feats, such as doing formations, maneuvering for directions, or just take pictures or videos with a specially mounted camera.
That makes the establishment of experience for beginners the only cure for the ‘safety feeling’ in sky diving. Sky diving is remarkably safe; most accidents that occur are often under a fully functioning canopies and experienced jumpers who continually go over the extremes. Visual and audible altimeters and Automatic Activation Device Chutes more than make up the safety of sky diving. Beginner accidents are rare, and fatalities due to malfunctioning equipment are rarer still.
It is easy to see why sky diving is a fantastic sport because it certainly has an edge to it. It may be an adrenaline pumping sport, whose addiction can be misplaced but many sky divers jump because it is the next thing to flying. And flying is one dream man had yet to conquer.
Last update : 07-04-2009 11:54
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By: qrmosyx () on 11-01-2010 12:51