Falling from the sky
What terminal velocity feels like
Over on Reddit today, everyone is talking about this incredible video of a GoPro camera falling out of a plane and landing in a pig farm.
It’s a great video (even before the pig gets involved) because it shows what free-fall is like — very spinny. The camera twirls drunkenly, eventually evening out as its rate of spin matches the its recording speed. Here’s another similar video with fewer pigs for those with swinophobia.
But what does free-fall, or ‘terminal velocity’ as physicists call it, feel like?
Assuming you’re protected from the buffeting winds, just like weightlessness. In fact, companies that offer “Zero G” experiences are using planes that intentionally go into free-fall for part of their flight. These planes, nicknamed ‘vomit comets’ for reasons that’ll shortly become apparent, climb at a 45-degree angle, then plunge back downward over the course of about a minute.
At the top of the arc, passengers on board experience a sense of weightlessness for about 25 seconds, but in between they’re subject to a force about twice that of gravity. In about two-thirds of passengers, this experience produces severe nausea. The plane repeats this manoeuvre between forty and sixty times in one flight.
You can see it in action in the following video, shot by the BBC in the sixties as part of its coverage of the Apollo missions. Skip to about 2:30 or so for presenter James Burke’s absolute glee as he rises off the floor.
But that’s a very different experience from that of a skydiver. They tend to reach terminal velocity very quickly after exiting the aircraft — usually after just a second or two (during which time they experience the stomach-in-the-throat feeling of acceleration).
“As you pick up speed it goes away and you more or less feel like you’re laying face-down on the floor, only there’s no floor, just wind blowing up at you,” explained one skydiver in a 2009 Ask Metafilter discussion thread. “It feels like you’re floating in space, and it’s wonderful,” added another.
That wind is hard to ignore, though. Imagine sticking your head out of the sunroof when a car is driving, but that force hitting your whole body, and you’ll get some idea of what it’s like. It’s loud too — you can’t really hear much as it screams past your ears. Eventually you pop your parachute, and glide down the rest of the way peacefully before the final bump.
For a taste of what it’s like, here’s the view from the camera affixed to Felix Baumgartner’s helmet when he jumped from 39,045 metres altitude in 2012. Skip to 1:40 or so for the action, the jump takes place at 3:45.
If a parachute isn’t involved, things get fatal fast. The height at which fifty percent of children die from a fall lies between four and five storeys from the ground.
But there are a few stories of people falling from far higher and surviving. The most exceptional case known is Vesna Vulović, a Serbian flight attendant, who fell to Earth over the Czech Republic in 1972 when her plane exploded.
She fell 10,160 metres, wedged between her seat, another crew member, a section of the aircraft and a drinks trolley. She hit snowy ground at an angle, sliding some distance before eventually coming to rest. Despite a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae that left her temporarily paralysed from the waist down and two broken legs, she survived and made a full recovery — taking a desk job but continuing to fly from time to time. Perhaps relatedly, she has no memory of the crash.
However, if you’re feeling brave, you can see a video of what a plane crash is like first-hand. In 2013, a pair of planes collided violently in the skies over Wisconsin. Incredibly, the two planes were carrying skydivers and everyone on board — including the pilots — was wearing a parachute. The result? Everyone landed safely and unharmed.
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