The wait must have been excruciating…three hours or so to
achieve sufficient altitude. People all
over the world watched in amazement as Felix Baumgartner willingly jumped out of
a balloon-borne capsule 25 miles above the ground. He sped to earth so fast he broke the sound
barrier. He literally became a human
sonic boom. Then he pulled his ripcord
and floated to earth, landing on his feet like it was just another day in the
park.
I was fascinated. But
what puzzles me is why people think that the higher you go the scarier or more
dangerous it must be. For sheer mileage,
I agree that it was phenomenal. But the
thing is, if your parachute doesn’t open, it really doesn’t matter whether you fall 25 miles or 2500 feet…splat is splat.
I’m not afraid to fly, mind you. I’ve done some commercial flying. I’ve even been up in a double, open-cockpit
bi-wing and ridden in a hot air
balloon. I’m just not one of
those people who really feel they haven’t arrived until they jump out of an
airplane. I don’t think I would hesitate
if the plane was likely to crash, but as long as it has no problems, it’s not
in my personality to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft.
I do admire Felix Baumgartner for his leap of faith. Faith is what it takes to make that jump: believing your chute will open, you won’t have
catastrophic decompression, you won’t freeze to death, you won’t pass out and
not regain consciousness until it’s too late to pull the cord. I would love to possess that kind of
faith. But even if my faith grows, I’m
still not jumping out of any airplanes!
No comments:
Post a Comment