Chuteless Jumping Is The Goal, Landing Safely Might Be A Problem

As crazy as it seems the race is on to develop a way to jump out of an airplane or base jump without a parachute and somehow fly your way to a safe landing.



"Jeb Corliss wants to fly — not the way the Wright brothers wanted to fly, but the way we do in our dreams. He wants to jump from a helicopter and land without using a parachute.
And his dream, strange as it sounds, is not unique. Around the globe, at least a half-dozen groups — in France, South Africa, New Zealand, Russia and the United States — are chasing this same flight of fancy.
(...)
Corliss will wear nothing more than a wing suit, an invention that, aeronautically speaking, is more flying squirrel than bird or plane. He plans to land on a specially designed runway of his own design. It will borrow from the principles of Nordic ski jumping and will cost upward of $2 million, which explains why he is being so much more vocal than the others about his quest.
Jean-Albert figures he could glide to a stop on a snowy mountainside. “The basic idea is getting parallel to the snow so we don't have a vertical speed at all, there is no shock, and then slide,” he said.
Then there is Maria von Egidy, a wing suit maker from South Africa, who said she had begun creating a suit that would allow pilots to land on their feet on a horizontal surface."

They're already down with the spectacular horizontal flight part of the equation.
I jumped when I was in college and joined a club. It truly was the most frightening thing I have ever done in my life, to jump out of a plane thousands of feet in the air. It was also the most fun.