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Luke Aikins is a skydiver who is a safety and training advisor for the United States Parachute Association, and who has performed stunts on films such as Iron Man 3. Last night, he became the first person to jump out of an airplane without a parachute or wing suit and survive the landing on Saturday.
The stunt is nothing short of amazing: leap out of an
airplane at 25,000 feet (most skydivers jump at around 13,000 feet) without any
sort of parachute or wing suit to slow his fall. To survive, he dropped into a
10,000 square foot net only a third the size of a football field.
You can watch the entire event here:
Just before climbing into a plane, Aikins said the Screen
Actors Guild required him to wear a parachute but he indicated he wouldn't open
it.
A few minutes before the jump one of the show's hosts said
the requirement had been lifted and Aikins left the plane without the chute.
Aikins didn't say what prompted the original restriction,
and representatives for the show and the Screen Actors Guild did not
immediately respond to phone and email messages.
Aikins said wearing it would actually make it harder for him
to properly put himself over the 100-foot-by-100-foot net and more dangerous
because he would have its canister on his back when he hit the net at about 120
miles per hour.
'I'm going all the way to the net, no question about it,' he
said from the plane. 'I'll just have to deal with the consequences when I land
of wearing the parachute on my back and what it's going to do to my body.'
The jump was broadcast live as part of a one-hour TV special
but with a slight delay and a warning to viewers not to try this themselves.
For the first 10,000 feet of the fall Aikins used an oxygen
tank - one of the three other skydivers who jumped with him was in charge of
collecting the discarded tank.
Another one carried a camera and the final one trailed smoke
so people on the ground could follow his descent.
The trio opened their chutes at 5,000 feet, leaving Aikins
alone. He was assisted by the three fellow skydivers and a GPS unit to help guide him to the net in the California desert. Just before he hit the net, he flipped onto his back and landed safely.
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