Nifty "Science Friday" Wingsuit Video

[FlyingRhenquest 1]

I stumbled across this bit on Youtube. It's quite well reported. It's almost amusing how dispassionate the report is, in this era of sensationalized news broadcasting. So not only is it nifty for touching on a lot of the science of the sport, it's also a good example of what journalism is supposed to be; reporting the facts without introducing any of your own bias into the report.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5S-SGxHjqw

I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

[JohnMitchell 16]

Thanks for that.

I love NPR's intelligent, dispassionate style of reporting. Such a contrast from many of the other "news" outlets.

[Abedy 0]

Tnx4sharing. Nice one. Very matter-of-fact, objective, not sensationalist as many other "reports" are.

The sky is not the limit. The ground is.

The Society of Skydiving Ducks

[Niki1 2]

Flying down through that canyon/gully got my heart going. Just spectacular.

I would take exception to the narators explaination of "time expansion". Fear os not the cause of the effect. (If that's the right way to say it.) Athletes experience the same thing when they are "in the zone". I'm affraid they didn't do very good research on that part of the story. Psychology Today September, 1969 (and partially reprinted in Parachutist, Jan. or Feb 1970) had an excellent article on performance under stress. It reported studiies on fire fighters, combat soldiers, skydivers, and another group that I've forgotten. Maybe athletes. Everyone experiences EITHER time expansion or time compression in moment of sttess. The next time you're trainning a student, ask if they've ever been in, say a car crash or some thing similar. If they can relate an instant by instant description of the event, they'll probably do well on their jump. If they say, "Well, I looked up and it was all over," you may want to tell them to go bowling.

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?

[Dean358 0]

Good video, thanks for posting.

It's interesting how the proliferation of BASE wingsuit videos has tweaked public opinion of the sport. I can't tell you how many times after finding out I'm a skydiver someone says "Oh, cool. I REALLY want to try that BASE jumping thing." (Really? Hmmm...) Pity we don't have the same public relations bump for skydiving.

Edited to add: yes, flying down that canyon was better than my morning cup of coffee.

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