ShareIn my short story A Long Way Down (http://mathoda.com/2008/05/short-story-a-long-way-down-by-ranjit-mathoda), I envisioned two people jumping from “the old space station Alpha” and falling all the way to the Earth. When I wrote the story, on November 30, 2000, that kind of event seemed a long way off.
Now it doesn’t seem quite so far in the future. In a TED talk, skydiver Steve Truglia (wikipedia) explains that he intends to jump to the Earth from the edge of space (an elevation of 120,000 feet or 36.5 kilometers). That’s not as far away as a space station, but it’s a super impressive ambition nonetheless.
Here’s the speech by Mr. Truglia: http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_truglia_a_leap_from_the_edge_of_space.html
You can find out more about the status of Mr. Truglia’s project at http://www.spacejump.co.uk/
