One of my previous blogs on Sky Diving went into the details of falling from a very lengthy height and parachuting towards the bottom. Whilst roaming the internet on Stumbleupon, i came across a cool article that featured a man attempting a record "space dive". I was like... wtf? Space diving that cant end well. Cause like in the movies and stuff when objects fall from space they get all fiery and supernatural and what not. I just assumed that anyone crazy enough to try it would be ash by the time they got even close to the ground. But sure enough, people do it...
Space diving refers to the theoretical idea of an individual falling from outer space into the Earth's atmosphere and then parachuting to a landing. This is similar to sky diving but would occur from space. This concept has been shown in various media, including Star Trek and the novel Starship Troopers.
There are several technical requirements and challenges to the possibility of space jumping. Any reentry suit would likely have to be armored to survive the heat of reentry(see what im saying!), while also containing life support systems sufficient for the user to survive while in the airless conditions of space - Robert Heinlein, the author of Starship Troopers and a former spacesuit designer, conceived of a (fictional) reentry system involving multiple ablative shells and parachutes. These requirements would be somewhat eased when entering the atmosphere from a simple drop, where the heat of reentry would be considerably less than that of reentering from orbit. Parachutes would require increased strength to slow the higher weights associated with the added equipment. NASA is known to have investigated the concept in case of an emergency situation on the shuttle where alternative methods of reentry are not available — however, such planning has not moved beyond the conceptual stage given the high energies involved in reentry from orbital speeds.
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