About five years, a woman skydiver was making plans to do a jump from 108,000 ft via a balloon. I have no idea what happened to that, probably money.

The Starship Troopers movie was crap. RAH was spinning in his grave.

Oh yeah, records. Except 755.

... in a filmed but unused scene from Star Trek:Generations - it's on the special edition DVD. Aparently 'Orbital skydiving' is listed as one of Kirk's hobbies.

"Sadly the cool motorised armour, drop capsules, hand flamers etc didn't appear in the film"

Nope, but some or all of them did appear in the kid's TV spinoff, Roughnecks. Remember watching that when I was somewhat younger. Damn good series.

Be darned if I can't remember the name of man or the test; there was a documentary on tests done by NASA which culminated with a man jumping from a weather balloon where, in true US style, his glove wouldn't seal properly but he refused to terminate the test, exposing his hand to frost bite low pressure, etc His test was successful, great footage ... laughed about his ass hitting the atmosphere at about 2 or 3 times the speed of sound ... if anyone can recall the name of the project, the name of the tester, or provide a link to video footage that would be great.

If they made the whole passanger cabin of an orbiter detachable or installed a separate escape pod, it would be doable without developing new technologies. Actually the international space station uses an escape capsule just like this, it's called the soyuz reentry module. It comes complete with an orbital and a service module and a guaranteed 6 month shelf life. By stripping everything but the reentry capsule and a pack of solid fuel rockets for deorbiting, it can be used as a compact ecape pod.

Parachutes are a bit dorky for the chic millionaire set, aren't they? Why not give them a high-tech surf-board each and they could descend in the style of Brian Narelle in John Carpenter's "Dark Star".

...has one of the survivors of "Let there be light" surfing into atmosphere on a fragment of debris. Hope whoever pilots this scheme comes to ground rather more intact...

Alan Steele, in his book "Orbital Decay" described a practical self de-orbiting emergency kit, but even in fiction, it was admitted that the character that used it was the first to have the temerity to give it a go.

"despite having left the plane at three times the speed of sound"

Where did he go ? Did he 'pop out' for a ciggy break ?

Duncan E.

In 1960 Captain Joseph Kittinger of US Air Force bailed out of a polyethylene plastic balloon at 31,354 m setting a new altitude record for balloon flight and a new record for parachute descent.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Starfleet_Survival_Guide

The Starfleet Survival Guide has a section about surviving Atmospheric re-entry in a pressure suit - no parachutes involved.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-369888258105653405

True story of an attempt to break Joseph Kittinger's record, all was going well until read had a schizophrenic episode and stabbed his girlfriend. Incredible, brutally honest book well worth hunting down. I'm not saying that the freefall was the cause but it might make you think before signing up

I'd sell my wife and children to do something like that.

What I want to know is when we will get a <A HREF="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082509/">Heavy Metal</A> style drop of a Corvette from orbit!

I don't want the kids, but might make a offer for your wife. Photo?

What wasn't mentioned was that the pilot survived the SR-71 breakup but his 2nd seater didn't.

The SR-71 was being flown with an unusually rearward centre of gravity and suffered an engine "unstart" during a mach 3 turn. The was enough to make it uncontrollable, resulting in a hypersonic tunble and partial disintegration.

Neither occupant ejected. The pilot was thrown through the canopy with enough force to snap his safety harness and regained conciousness free falling in his inflated pressure suit before making a parachute landing. Something similar happened to the other guy except that his neck was broken as he was thrown out of the plane.

This episode doesn't probe anything about hypersonic bailouts or space-diving because of the way the occupants were slung out of a tumbling, disintegrating aircraft.