[vannevar]

I think your balloon idea has some merit. For much of the early fall, very little gas would be needed to support a very large balloon that would retard the fall and limit terminal velocity. If your velocity stays low from the start, you never have to worry about heat building up. As the descent continued, eventually the atmosphere would thicken to the point that the balloon provided actual buoyancy, and subsequently a controlled descent could be made. Perhaps two balloons would be required, one weak, large one for the initial fall at the edge of the atmosphere and another stronger one for the final descent through ordinary weather conditions. The question is, how big would that first balloon need to be at the altitude of the space station?

[vannevar]

I did a little digging, and this question is not easy to answer. There is much material regarding atmospheric drag on satellites, but those calculations require the assumption of hypervelocity. I wonder whether a simple calculation based on particle density and momentum transfer, with the balloon essentially sweeping out a vertical column of atoms as it fell, would yield a good order-of-magnitude estimate on the drag force available.

[rrmm]

At the start of the jump you're already going about 27000 km/h (ISS orbital velocity). The falling part of the problem isn't the hard part.

[vannevar]

I'm assuming the orbital velocity has already been scrubbed off, and we're talking about a simple fall, which is more in the spirit (if not the letter) of the original question. Could you prevent the velocity from building up with a large drag device such as a balloon in that case?

[rrmm]

To me, the question implied that the design of the suit would have to overcome that problem; but I can see it either way.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reentry , there is a section on an inflatable heat shield launched on a sounding rocket (so sub-orbital, but lower altitude).