Parachute

July 17, 2012 | In: Space Facts

I remember when i was very young. I really wanted to fly. I made my father to buy a chainsaw engine, so i could attach to it some sort of proppeler. With that out of the question(i was sure my dream would surely come true), i needed a parachute. I’m sure you’re certain about the form my parachute had… Yes it was an umbrella.

But let’s stop at the real parachute.

The first parachute was designed in 1470. 15 yars later, Da Vinci too scheched a model. In 2000, a sky diver called Adrian Nicholas jumped with an exact replica. And yes, it worked.

It all started as a dream, and more than 400 years later, the modern parachute appeared. In 1910, the backpack-parachute was invented, because of the immense airplane industry comming.

In the Second World War, the parachute were made from silk, instead of nylon. In 1944, more than 20.000 were parachuted in Holland, in order to siege an important bridge near the city of Anhem.

The record for the highest parachute jump is still standing from 1960. On the 16th of August, Joseph Kittinger jumped from a ballon more than 101.100 feet high. During the actual flight, Kittinger experienced temperatures of -70 degrees C. Before he opened the parachute, he reached the speed of 614 mph.

In 2001, Michael Zang broke the world record for the most jumps in 24 hours. He managed to jump more than 500 times, from an altitude of 2100 feet. That’s more than 20 jumps per hour, at an average of 2:45 minutes per jump. He did this in order to raise funds for orfan children. The program was called JUMP4KIDS.