Posted on 07/30/2016 2:50:28 PM PDT by granite
Picture of Luke Akins during a training run View Images Luke Aikins is training his body to be able to maneuver through the unpredictability of the wind. PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY FARRINGTON By Andrew Bisharat PUBLISHED JULY 29, 2016 Luke Aikins, 42, has deployed a parachute around 18,000 times over the last two and a half decades of his skydiving and BASE jumping career. But this Saturday, he’s going to find out if he can get away without one.
After two years of training, planning, and preparation, Aikins plans to jump out of a Cessna airplane at 25,000 feet (7,620 meters). With him will be a GPS, a communication device, and an oxygen tank. What he won’t have is a parachute, a wingsuit, or anything else that might help him stop or slow his descent.
“My whole life has been about air, aviation, flying, jumping, all that stuff,” said Aikins, a third-generation skydiver, during a television interview with Q13 FOX, the network broadcasting Aikins’ stunt, with a five-second delay, on July 30 at 8 p.m. ET (National Geographic Partners is a part of Fox Network Groups). “I’m out here to show that there are ways to do things that people think are insane and aren’t able to be done.”
As a TV audience tunes in to witness the spectacle—dubbed Heaven Sent and billed by the corporate sponsor and producer, Stride Gum, as the “most dangerous stunt ever shown live”—Aikins’ friends and family, including his wife, herself a skydiving instructor, and their four-year-old son will be on location..
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalgeographic.com ...
Sponsored by Spatula City?
Can’t say I’m familiar with the place :)
But it sounds like a lot of fun!
Hold my beer...lol
He should take if off in free fall, that way the FAA can't screw the pilot.
Otherwise I smell Evil Knevel jumps the canyon
Yeah. Claims the parachute is making him go off-course so he pulls the chute.
They already did a test run with a 200lb dummy and the dummy broke right through the net. Even after watching the dummy get destroyed the guy still wants to do it.
So which one is the real dummy?
While it’s still crazy enough that the guy you reference did a similar jump, he did his from about 2000 feet with a wingsuit out of a stable, hovering helicopter. He flew onto a 100-yard x 20-yard airstrip of cardboard boxes, and since he had a wingsuit, his landing was nearly horizontal, at about 70mph.
This new moron is doing it from 25,000 feet out a Cessna that’s doing 80mph+, and this idiot doesn’t use a wingsuit to provide more aerodynamic action. So he’ll be heading nearly straight down, at about 120mph. This is a guy with a serious death wish.
Well maybe he’ll die “doing what he loves!”
I don't think "moron" even begins to describe this idiot.
Yeah, I should have expected you would have something rude to say about my good work. Bye now...you can crawl back in your hole.
If you ask an Adrenalin junkie why, he will say why not.
No chute on in the last vid of him in the plane,
I know it’s only a TV show, but it annoyed me on Family Matters when Carl decided to go skydiving. You’re a cop, so your wife worries about you every day that you’re on the job, and now you’re going to throw this unnecessary risk on top of that? Plus, you have three or four kids you might be leaving behind for nothing.
In real life, the Duggar mother was skydiving on one episode. 19 Kids and Counting, and I think that number went up. Let’s risk leaving them motherless for an adrenaline rush.
Yikes, that doesn't bold well for him.
I bet if you ask any of us why (we did the most stupid thing we ever did), we would give the same answer :)
So, has he made the jump?
Just landed - not his day to die .... hit near the corner of the net, but is safe.
YES!!!!!!!!!! HE LIVES!!!!!!
On his feet, hugging the wife. He twisted in the air right at the end .... not sure if he was positioning his body to land a certain way or if it was a last minute adjustment - he wasn’t in the middle of the net. He had two skydivers with parachutes with him (putting off smoke so you could see him). When their parachutes deployed & the guy kept on going, you could see how fast he was falling - whew!
For his sake I hope he is wearing brown pants.
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