Luke Aikins is no stranger to skydiving. After all, he has made more than 16,000 jumps in his career. He even played a role in helping Felix Baumgartner make his historic free-fall from the edge of space back in 2012. But now, Aikins is preparing for a daring jump of his own, and it just might be more dangerous than the one that made Baumgartner a household name.
According to this article from Dropzone.com, Aikins is preparing to make a jump from 25,000 feet (7620 meters) without using a parachute at all. Instead, he’ll use a wingsuit to control his descent as he attempts to land on a 100×100 foot (30×30 meter) net which will stop his fall.
This event, which will take place at an undermined date later this year, will leave little room for error on the part of Aikins He’ll be traveling at a tremendous speed as he nears the net, and even the slightest error in his flight path could result in disaster. Of course, the jump is set to be aired on television, although it is unclear as to which network will actually show it live.
As Dropzone points out, this won’t be the first time a skydiver has jumped out of a plane with out a chute, but in most other cases they had others with them that were able to either grab them on the way down, or hand them a parachute to don as they descended. In this case, Aikins will be all alone, and won’t have safety net of carrying a parachute with him. If something goes wrong, he’s on his own, and it isn’t likely to end well.
The video below is a teaser for the project, which has been dubbed “Heaven Sent.” Lets hope that name isn’t somehow portentous of the outcome. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the weeks ahead.
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The attempt to hype up this jump is exggerated. When Gary Connery wing-suited to land in England last year he had no back-up or person to hand him a chute. He landed on a field of cardboard boxes – not much different to the net that Luke Atkins will use. In other words, "its been done already."
Ah…yes! I had forgotten about that. I believe I even posted the video of it here. Let me see if I can find it, and update the original story.
Thanks for the reminder!
What Gary did was great and for sure he was the first man to land a wing suit. This is a lot different no wing suit instead of 40mph down or less this will be straight up free fall 120mph straight down.
Luke Aikins
Thanks for the clarification Luke, and apologies for misspelling your last name. I've corrected that in the article.
Good luck!!