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I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

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Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

#171

Post by jbverschoor »

margalabargala wrote: post #119
jbverschoor wrote: post #110

Did the parachute not simply open before he landed in the water? He can't remember that part, and he only woke up after the parachute was under water and yanking on him. Either way, refreshing to see a well written piece.

The closed parachute acted as a streamer, slowing him down enough to cause only severe injury on a water landing. Had the parachute opened, an unconscious water landing would not have caused such injuries. That would only happen at speed. Am a licensed skydiver.

Not even when it opened at the last moment?

I don’t know how fast he was falling, but even in water it seems almost impossible

Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

#172

Post by bmitc »

cm42 wrote: post #80
sharadov wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is insane is that after falling in the water he was still conscious and had the presence of mind to cut the parachute chords. How do you retain all your bearings after multiple things going wrong and just not give up? Testament to his fight to live ( am sure he's unique in that respect).

Constant training, even/especially in bad weather, and constantly preparing for specific tasks like this. "Amateurs practice till they get it right; professionals practice till they can't get it wrong."

Is that your quote or did you get it from somewhere? It’s really good.

Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

#173

Post by a4isms »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #147
a4isms wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link, although I believe we're now in a place where "relative impressiveness" is all-but-meaningless. These are all impressive stories, and trying to figure out which one is more impressive is a little like sitting in a barbershop trying to figure out who is the greatest boxer that ever lived. My contribution to impressive feats of survival bailing out of an airplane is this story of a WWII ball turret…

I think you have the same story twice. The ball gunner went into an evergreen forest in the winter.

The story I was thinking of is of Nicholas Alkemade, linked elsewhere in this discussion. He was a Lancaster tail gunner:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade

The story I linked to above is of Alan Magee, a B-17 ball turret gunner who fell through the glass roof of the Saint Nazare train station.

They’re not the same story, but boy are they similar!

Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

#174

Post by pge »

merely-unlikely wrote: post #136

It amazes the quantity of resources that will sometimes be deployed to rescue a sole man (or a handful) lost at sea. Not to say this is a bad thing; I would certainly appreciate it if I were lost at sea. But it might be questionable to a pure utilitarian. I counted at least one plane, two ships, and a helicopter all being diverted for the rescue. That's a great deal of expense in terms of fuel, I assume hundreds of c…

It's also (as I understand it) international law at sea that it is the duty of any ship able to help to go the aid of a distressed ship/person.

Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

#175

Post by jondeval »

otikik wrote: post #161
louison11 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say this is actually when you see the true purpose of a military shine: protect its people. It doesn’t matter how much it costs. This is real love and sacrifice right here. I read that and although I’m not American, I felt very patriotic. What a great attitude and effort all the people involved brought.

I read it differently. I think it’s a tradeoff: they know that if they don’t do that sort of expenditure, troop morale will go down and they will have a less effective group anyway. So they take the lesser hit.

I think in practice there is no 'they' where some sort of single bean-counter trade-off decision is made to compute an abstract utility function that weighs troop morale against expenditure.

More realistically, it's a human decision making process where everyone quickly aligns to do whatever it takes to rescue the downed pilot. I've seen first hand how US military members think in real life situations like this. Everyone acts without a hint of self-interest around the clock until they have exhausted all options.

In fairness, it helps that it's the US military and money is typically of no concern in operational settings. :-)

Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

#176

Post by chucksmash »

ars wrote: post #154
merely-unlikely wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if it was the same one but I've read you also want to avoid water (since it doesn't compress). Go for dirt/grass if possible.

That doesn't make sense: dirt/grass also don't compress. Small branches might be good, but water is certainly more compresible than dirt.

I agree that it seems unintuitive, but compressibility of water is up to four orders of magnitude lower than a very plastic clay, and even worse than gravel[1]. Generally the speeds at which we impact water are slow enough that this effect is not noticable (i.e. we have time to sufficiently displace, not compress, the water without suffering a catastrophic deceleration).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressibility#Earth_science

Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

#178

Post by Blackthorn »

otikik wrote: post #156
Forgeties79 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and soon afterwards got medically grounded — which meant he lost flight pay, with four school-aged kids while stationed in the Washington DC area; my mother had to go back to work as an RN (registered nurse) to make ends meet. That’s so, so wrong.

Not only it’s inhumane, it’s also stupid: it incentivizes pilots who have problems like that to hide them, instead of coming forward.

Indeed, this is exactly how the FAA medical system works. People either avoid medical care, or conceal it by paying in cash for everything, rather than risking their medical status.

Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

#179

Post by anderspitman »

dirtyid wrote: post #166
anderspitman wrote: post #97

Reminds me of a web page I stumbled upon many years ago. It was very much visually designed in the 90s style. The whole page was dedicated to tips and tricks for surviving falls from very high distances. I only remember 3 points: * For most of the fall, try to spread out like a flying squirrel to reduce your terminal velocity. * As you get close to the ground, rotate to take the impact primarily on your feet and legs…

I remember that page

Any idea what some good search terms might be to find it? Googling hasn't yielded any leads for me yet. Good chance it's down but maybe it exists on archive.org somewhere.

Re: I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)

#180

Post by anderspitman »

codethief wrote: post #117
anderspitman wrote: post #97

Reminds me of a web page I stumbled upon many years ago. It was very much visually designed in the 90s style. The whole page was dedicated to tips and tricks for surviving falls from very high distances. I only remember 3 points: * For most of the fall, try to spread out like a flying squirrel to reduce your terminal velocity. * As you get close to the ground, rotate to take the impact primarily on your feet and legs…

> As you get close to the ground, rotate to take the impact primarily on your feet and legs. That makes it sound a lot easier than it actually is.

You've probably got a minute or two to practice, yeah?
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