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by rtkwe 1336 days ago
Cliff was almost definitely falling slower than Vesna though because he had the partially deployed parachute providing extra drag.
2 comments

Terminal velocity varies a LOT based on body position and individual mass to surface area ratio, so honestly hard to know.

A ‘standard’ human falls between 110-130 mph in a ‘flat’ belly to earth position (which actually requires non-trivial training to achieve reliably).

Someone tumbling in an uncontrolled fashion will have wildly varying and often higher speeds.

Someone ‘tracking’ can have highly reduced descent rates, even as low as 90mph (no wing suit required).

Someone falling with a drogue chute or partially deployed chute can fall slower, or faster, depending on what body position it ends up putting them in and how much drag it actually produces. If it wraps around their leg or arm for instance, it can put them in a feet down or head down position, which will have them falling a lot faster. Head or feet down can easily be 150+ mph without special gear.

Having done it, it’s quite noticeably faster, and you have to watch the altitude a lot more as your floor comes up much faster than your intuition expects.

Source: licensed skydiver (C for anyone who cares), with a decent number of relative formation work and free flying in my logbook.

But vesna was stuck in the fuselage, not just free falling. So she may have had a higher speed, but she have experienced fewer Gs as the fuselage crushed upon landing, giving her a greater distance to decelerate.

But really, it's silly to compare these. Neither relied on any personal qualities to achieve the outcome, it is basically just blind luck in both cases. Without Cliff's lack of spleen or Vesnas weirdly low blood pressure, both probably would have died. Or if they just landed oriented slightly differently.