Not for acrophobes.

October 3, 2007 8:59 AM

Human flight.Birdman suits enable the wearer to fly. You can jump from land or sky. If that's not exciting enough for you, add a rocket.
posted by desjardins (27 comments total)

It's not so much the flying part that's been difficult for man throughout the ages. It's the landing.
posted by gwint at 9:08 AM on October 3, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

The bird suits are cool. However, this guy has kicked it up a notch by using a collapsible wing fitted with rockets. He can actually gain altitude.
posted by Mr_Zero at 9:10 AM on October 3, 2007

rockets jets
posted by Mr_Zero at 9:11 AM on October 3, 2007

"Haha! Fuck you nature! Great to be human."

An unintentionally profound YouTube comment.
posted by itchylick at 9:20 AM on October 3, 2007 [5 favorites has favorites]

visions of W. E. Coyote come unhindered to mind
posted by edgeways at 9:26 AM on October 3, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

HA, Ha! Cookies on dowels.
posted by nervestaple at 9:42 AM on October 3, 2007

I would never jump off anything higher than a diving board in to a pool, but alot of the things the Norwegians are seen doing in the base jump look reckless to me. Throwing the guy over the edge?
posted by Keith Talent at 9:44 AM on October 3, 2007

I want one that'll get me to my job and back. Rocket back-pack with jumping-glider shoes and a helmet.
posted by doctorschlock at 9:45 AM on October 3, 2007

Most of this previously, but I don't get tired of seeing flying dude and base jumping.
posted by MtDewd at 9:52 AM on October 3, 2007

So where's the video of the greasy spot on the rocks?
posted by palancik at 9:56 AM on October 3, 2007

Wow. ACME is doing a lot better than I previously thought.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 10:02 AM on October 3, 2007

How come no one wears a flying squirrel suit and mask? Also, is there any video of someone landing?
posted by pracowity at 10:07 AM on October 3, 2007

fly glide

Fall, really. Fall with wings.
posted by Reggie Digest at 10:16 AM on October 3, 2007

Condorman!
posted by papercake at 10:16 AM on October 3, 2007

Those rockets look damn dangerous. The foot of the prior wearer is still attached.
posted by Malor at 10:18 AM on October 3, 2007

A separate jet for each leg? What could possibly go wrong?
posted by DU at 10:37 AM on October 3, 2007

"That's not flying. It's falling with style."
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:02 AM on October 3, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Why am I not surprised that the last 'add a rocket' link involves us Finns. As a nation, we're good at two things: engineering and doing crazy shit. Oh, and drinking, which heavily influences the two former disciplines.
posted by slimepuppy at 11:10 AM on October 3, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Those aren't rockets, they're jets.
posted by delmoi at 11:12 AM on October 3, 2007

Kirth stole my line. AGAIN!
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:21 AM on October 3, 2007

ahhhh, Even though I love the good things that come with being an old fart, just for flying, wish I were a kid again. I would so love to fly in a flying suit! It's lovely to see this, always gives me a real thrill. Leonardo da Vinci would have gotten such a kick out of this last century.

Flying squirrel in genetically engineered flying suit.

Rocky, the flying squirrel.
posted by nickyskye at 12:01 PM on October 3, 2007

I so much want to do this Nick Fury style - with a cigar in my mouth and a patch over my eye.
Funny, they never show those SHIELD guys landing. Huh.
But yeah, this has YEEE HAAA kindsa fun written all over it.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:09 PM on October 3, 2007

a furry flyer.
posted by desjardins at 1:36 PM on October 3, 2007

Rocky, the flying squirrel.

"Hold your fire, boys, that squirrel's a US TAXPAYER!"
posted by lodurr at 2:11 PM on October 3, 2007

Michael Abram's book Birdmen, Batmen, and Skyflyers explores and illustrates their risky business. Popular Science has a lengthy excerpt:

One particular statistic intrigued me: seventy-two of the seventy-five batmen who jumped from planes for air shows from the 1930s to the 1960s were killed in their wings. Months earlier I hadn't even heard of such "birdmen," and now there were seventy-five of them, most of whom had died some kind of presumably spectacular death. Who were they? Why did they keep at it? Why didn't the rest of the world know about them?
...
Gayardon had invented the wingsuit and wowed the skydiving world with spectacular stunts, but after 500 flights he went the way of the batmen of the thirties and forties--a malfunction sent him to his death in a Hawaiian banana field just months after Pecnik and Kuosma had seen his photo. Undeterred, the pair based their wingsuits on what they had seen of Gayardon's getup, but neither Pecnik nor Kuosma was an engineer of any kind, and when they went to test their wings for the first time, they gave themselves a 50-percent chance of surviving. "It was just such a big jump into the unknown," says Kuosma. "We were doing something that we knew some people had done before . . . but they were all dead."

To some degree, every winged jump is one into the unknown.

Although it hasn't been updated lately, there's more stories and photos on Abram's blog, The Icarus Report.
posted by cenoxo at 8:13 PM on October 3, 2007

Note that the rocket boots are made of Canadian hockey skates... good structural engineering. :)
posted by anthill at 8:26 PM on October 3, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

And lest we think too highly of our falling abilities, let us not forget Cephalotes atratus, the gliding ant.
posted by cenoxo at 8:31 PM on October 3, 2007