Birdmen, Batmen, And Skyflyers Wingsuits And the Pioneers Who Flew in Them, Fell in Them, And Perfected Them

Chapter 1 One Small Step for Man = One Giant Step for Man For those of us who fly in our dreams, rarely is there any flapping of the arms, nor are there hidden jets or superhero capes. No air, really. The means of propulsion, even for daytime nihilists, is some kind of faithjust a matter of knowing it can be donethat keeps the body suspended and moving. And as that faith wanes, maybe from some creeping knowledge that it must be a dream, instead of plummeting to the ground there's just a slow, soft descent. Sometimes there's only enough faith to hover a few inches or feet above the ground. But those inches are miles when compared to how high we expect to fly after our morning cup of coffee. In the waking world we are utterly certain that any step off a mountain, roof, or table will have the same result: blind obedience to the draconian laws of physics. We can fantasize that if we could just muster up enough faith, we could launch ourselves off some precipice and hover there like Wile E. Coyote before he notices the earth's no longer beneath him. But to go any further with the fantasy is to feel gravity's tug. No one will ever persuade us to jumpwithout a parachutefrom anything much higher than the kitchen counter. Fasting, lashing the flesh, walking on coals: these are the limits of what the faithful are asked to do. What religion or cult has ever suggested to its followers that with enough faith they could fly? And yet every century has had its birdmen, people with enough faith in the possibility of humans taking flightand enough faith in whatever accoutrements they had devisedto take the literal plunge. Had they heard of a leading edge? No. Was angle of attack a part of their vocabulary? Less than unlikely. Lift and drag? Forget about it. The tower jumpers of centuries past had a kind of faith that separates those who dream of flight from those who try it. It's hard to talk about humans trying to reach birdy heights without first touching on the Greek myth of Daedalus and his young egg, Icarus. But the tale has more bearing on our story than it might first seem. Daedalus, a metalsmith and inventor of great talent, and Icarus were incarcerated by King Minos, on the island of Crete. To escape, Daedalus assembled wings of feathers, wax, and whatnot and learned to fly. He made another set for Icarus and, before they took off, advised his son not to fly too near the sun, lest the wax melt. "No fancy steering by star or constellation, follow my lead!" as the poet Ovid puts it in the Rolfe Humphries translation. And so they flew, dazzling farmers and boatmen below, who thought them gods. Needless to say, Icarus was having such a heady time that he couldn't resist flying sunwardthe wax melted and he plunged to a watery death. Despite the unhappy ending, the tale seems to inspire flight-minded people of all kinds. Ballooning, aviation, and bungee-jumping companies have named themselves after the wax-winged hero, and Icarus Canopies is perhaps the best-known parachute manufacturer in the world. The fact that these companies are unafraid to use the name of a figure whose fearless adventurism led directly to his death can only be explained by the fact that those attracted to flight tend to be (or want to be) fearless adventurers. Leo Valentin, whose jumps (and death) in the 1950s inspired a slew of imitators in the second half of the century, did not read the tale of Icarus as a cautionary one. Instead he saw it as "amplified and glorified to strike the imagination, to satisfy the taste for the marvelous." The same stores that sell Icarus skydiving gear also sell bumper stickers that say no fear, no limit. You might think a skydiving company could just as easily name itsAbrams, Michael is the author of 'Birdmen, Batmen, And Skyflyers Wingsuits And the Pioneers Who Flew in Them, Fell in Them, And Perfected Them', published 2006 under ISBN 9781400054916 and ISBN 1400054915.