After leaping from an airplane, Luke Aikins rocketed toward earth for two minutes, and then calmly flipped onto his back at the last second and landed dead center into a 100-by-100-foot net in California.
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Luke Aikins put it all on the line on Saturday during the televised event called “Heaven Sent”, becoming the first person in history to jump from a plane from almost 5 miles in the sky without a parachute or wingsuit, and landing safely with pinpoint precision in a 100-by-100-foot net posted above the ground.
Since the jump was on television, it nearly didn’t happen.
Interviewed afterwards, Aikins said that he nearly didn’t jump because of the restriction and said he wouldn’t have pulled the ripcord anyway. He positioned himself using only air currents before landing on his back in the net. “Then, two weeks went by and I kept waking up in the middle of the night thinking, ‘If somebody said you had to do this, how could it be done?'”
Aikins jumped with three other skydivers, each wearing parachutes.
“If you train right you can make anything happen”, he said. He quickly hugged his wife after and thanked his fans for the support.
There was a lot of method behind Aikins madness: he has made more than 18,000 skydiving jumps. His family owns Skydive Kapowsin near Tacoma, Washington.
The 42-year-old free fell at speeds of up 193 kilometres per hour over Simi Valley, just under 50 kilometres from downtown Los Angeles.
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Further to his credit, Aiken is a safety and training advisor for the United States Parachute Association (USPA) where he provides advanced skydiving training to elite military Special Forces.
