eli5 if a wingsuit allows you fly, why do you still need a parachute? couldn’t you glide to a landing?

Question

Why can’t you just slowly bleed off speed and just land like a flying squirrel or other animals that glide? Why do you need a parachute?

In: 6

Answer 1

Wingsuits still have a relatively terrible glide ratio (how fast you lose altitude compared to how fast you go forward) compared to small gliding animals. That means you’re descending *fast* and you’re moving *very* quickly.

In *theory* you can pull up in to a stall and manage to achieve a survivable sink rate at the same time your groundspeed drops low enough to not just go into a 100 mph somersault, but the timing to do so is nearly impossible and margin for error is effectively zero. And there’s no real way to practice it…the first time you try it without knowing what you’re doing, you’ll die.