3 ms·

This might be a silly question, but couldn't his suit have added a tail to help prevent spinning?

• mittermayr 14y ago
  they also had other ideas like a long heavy ball falling first with a long rope that he's attached to to stabilize as well as small rockets to counter-steer things, but it wouldn't couldn't as a completely free fall somehow, they said.
• lloyddobbler 14y ago
  Most of those sorts of options will do more harm than good. If you've ever attempted to skydive (or fly in a wind tunnel), you know that the slightest move of one's hand can cause instability, or a spin. It takes a lot of experience to gain enough control to be able to really fly your body (and in the dead air at the altitude of this jump, all previous bets are off). Adding any sort of wings, fins, or whatnot would cause more uncertainty than it would certainty. (This is why wingsuits are so dangerous to fly - the extra surface area means that the subtlest of moves are magnified significantly.) The safest option is a drogue parachute - the small stabilization parachute you see when watching tandem skydiving videos. They kept a drogue as an automatic backup to attempt to stabilize him if he encountered an uncontrollable spin. But even that has its risks. An entanglement on a jump like this (or any jump, really) could be a death warrant.
• matthew-wegner 14y ago
  Probably not, because he exited at almost zero atmosphere.