On May 28, 7:06*am, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote:
wrote:

Yep. *One of the most realistic moments in the latest Star Trek film
was the ad hoc tandem jump of Kirk and Sulu. *Upon deployment Kirk's
canopy is immediately ripped away. *Although (IIRC) the film indicated
a riser-harness (french links! those *******s!) failure it is more
likely that a riser connection would fail or seams would rip leading
to a 'blown out' canopy. *That's one of the reasons tandem jumps use
drogue chutes.

That "realistic" tandem jump was preceded by a jump from orbit.

Actually, if you paid attention to the dialog (albeit brief) the
mining platform was not 'in orbit' but was rather 'in hover'. Thus
the jump was not 'from orbit' and was not subject to re-entry
conditions. Instead it was more akin to Joe Kittinger's jump in 1960
from 102,000 feet in a balloon. http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...cs/q0243.shtml