Gary Connery
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2015–2022
2:34 · 7.6M views · Jun 3, 2012
Stuntman Gary Connery jumps from a helicopter at 2,400 feet in a wingsuit and lands without a parachute on a runway of stacked cardboard boxes, the first such landing.
Cited as an example of how padding can allow survival of very high-speed impacts.
3 comments from Hacker News
Stuntman Garry Connery demonstrated the efficacy of what you're describing when he jumped from a helicopter at 2,400 feet (730 metres) and steered himself using a wingsuit onto a runway of vertically stacked cardboard boxes. [1] [1] this video > At approximately 200 feet (61 m) over the landing strip, he changed the configuration of his wingsuit so as to decrease the gliding and vertical (falling) components of his velocity to 50 mph (80 km/h) and 15 mph (24 km/h) respectively. [2] [2] [LINK]
These are both pretty terrible arguments, due to [LINK] Cars have crumple zones for a reason. This is not to say seat belts aren't good, as they along with air bags contribute to impulse, but there's a huge difference between shooting an egg (or person) at a brick wall at 50 mph while naked, vs. encasing it in sufficient amounts of bubble wrap first. I'll gladly sprint into a tree, or ram a bike into a wall, at such speeds provide I or the tree/wall are sufficiently padded. ( this video )
Related to this, in 2012 Gary Connery [1] landed a wingsuit over cardboard boxes [2], and in 2016 Luke Aikins [3] jumped from 25000 feet (~7600 metres) without a parachute, landing into a giant net that absorbed the impact [4]. There has been issues of BASE jumpers accidentally landing wingsuits without deploying a parachute too (can't find any reference online at the moment). [1] - [LINK] [2] - this video [3] - [LINK] [4] - [LINK]