Timeline for A clothing material or other method to slow free-fall descent down walls
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 8, 2020 at 21:01 | comment | added | Blackhole | For information, I've done the pogo stick's maths in this answer. | |
| May 6, 2020 at 17:48 | comment | added | Willk | @JohnDvorak - re the spring; the energy is still there and so still potentially dangerous but you could scifi your way to less danger. I was thinking of phase change springs, where the energy is captured in compressing a gas to a liquid. On the trigger (an electrical current?) the liquid turns back into a gas, driving the piston. Like a combination of an air conditioner and a internal combustion engine. | |
| May 6, 2020 at 17:31 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | @JohnDvorak Yes, the question asks about jumping down and back up, but that's only because traversal is not possible with the given equipment. My point is that if you had this equipment, you wouldn't use it to jump down, which is the very thing you're trying to avoid in the first place - you'd just use it to jump across. It ignores the logical use of the system, much like using a jetpack to touch the ground and come back up - why wouldn't you just fly across? | |
| May 6, 2020 at 13:40 | comment | added | John Dvorak | As for skyscraper - ground - recharge - skyscraper, you do need a 30m rod to descend, and even more to ascend. Either that, or you have to scratch the "arbitrarily tall" bit. | |
| May 6, 2020 at 13:36 | comment | added | John Dvorak | The question - and answer - talks about rooftop to ground, not rooftop to rooftop. Just running fast and jumping won't do. | |
| May 6, 2020 at 13:30 | comment | added | John Dvorak | @NuclearWang you have a point. "Building" can range from anything from toolsheds that you have to bend over to enter, through Soviet-era 7-storey hutches, all the way to crazy superstructures almost a kilometer tall. I don't suppose that Pogoman and Spiderman could meet in an environment that would benefit them both. Unfortunately Pogoman would even have troubles in residential USSR - while the buildings aren't tall enough to reach terminal velocity, they are quite far apart. On the other hand, if you were traveling lengthwise, you wouldn't have to jump too often. | |
| May 6, 2020 at 12:43 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | @JohnDvorak I don't understand what you're getting at at all, or what part of my comment you're even referring to - what "wouldn't"? The size of the spring needed is related to the kinetic energy absorbed, which is proportional to the user's speed. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop will not require someone to be moving anywhere near terminal velocity - a person can jump a 20m gap moving at only 15m/s. A building has to be over 1500ft tall to hit TV. Why on earth would you need a 30m long spring? | |
| May 6, 2020 at 6:37 | comment | added | John Dvorak | So... 30 meters of a stiff spring coiled into something you can wear on your back? I know this is the far future, with unreasonably good materials and all, but ... I still wouldn't put that on me. Any containment failure would cut out a big circular hole through my torso and cause significant damage to surrounding property, which I'd have to pay. Also I'm not sure I like the idea of six times my weight up my ... whatever the attachment point is. I'll stick to a parachute, thank you. | |
| May 6, 2020 at 6:32 | comment | added | John Dvorak | @NuclearWang it wouldn't, actually. While the terminal velocity is your friend when you're trying to not splat against the ground - 30 meters of a stiff spring should provide a comfy deceleration of one second of 6G (which might not even knock you unconscious, assuming the rod doesn't slip, assuming you did your math right and assuming you can actually deploy the thing in time) - it's also your enemy when you're trying to recuperate that energy. One second of 240 km/h headwind doesn't sound like much, but it certainly is something. | |
| May 5, 2020 at 17:49 | history | edited | Willk | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 5, 2020 at 15:30 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | Neat idea. Instead of jumping all the way down to the ground and all the way back up, you could also use the pogo stick as a spring-powered launcher to move directly from rooftop to rooftop - just ratchet the spring down, point yourself where you want to go, and release. This would work on arbitrarily tall buildings, so long as they're sufficiently close, so the pogo wouldn't need to be as beefy as something that could absorb a very long fall. | |
| May 5, 2020 at 15:09 | history | answered | Willk | CC BY-SA 4.0 |