faster than thought? (has telepathy been timed?)
Title threw me...

Imagine what he can tell his grandkids.
"What did you ever do grandpa?"
"I was the first person to break the sound barrier with with just my body. All I had to do was jump from space..."

Is that still impossible to use jettisons around his body to mantain the balanced fall? However I think his instinct save his life. Imagine if spining goes uncontrolled longer he will be confused so much that panic will take over. Happily its not happened otherwise heart rate will jump significantly higher than 185b/min.
Congratulation for him because he was breave enough to step in this capsule when he was still on ground level - from that time he have to jump out anyway, anyhight - as high as dangerous it will be.

Is that still impossible to use jettisons around his body to mantain the balanced fall?

There's several possibilities that will be explored in the future. I'd guess small gyroscopes, or simply venting part of he oxygen supply in a particular direction. I don't think that throwing anything more substantial than gas from the suit will be implemented - as you could only do that a very limited amount of times and not in a very controlled way.

As soon as you hit atmosphere a drogue chute becomes somewhat effective.


The problem is not that it is impossible to end the spin, but that you don't have too many seconds for trial and error before you pass out.

With adequate training in a vertical supersonic wind tunnel (which don't yet exist, as far as I know), it would be easy to learn what to do about the spin. Essentially it's all about using your arms, legs and body to counteract the spin.

(And yes, you would have to use weights in your suit in the wind tunnel because the air is thicker at ground level.)

The other solution of course would be computer simulations, but I don't know how good they are for this task.

Using your arms and legs at that altitude isn't going to do anything. The atmosphere up there is so thin that you have no resistance to work against (spreading out as far as you can will allow you to spin as slowly as possible, but there's no way to slow down beyond that until atmospheric pressure rises lower down - and by that time it'll be too late)

Three miniscule gas exits (or one with a vectoring nozzle) and a controller that needs not be more powerful than a smartphone with three acceleration sensors could automatically stabilize a suit in no time.

And since you don't know what condition a person will be in after an emergency exit (injured? unconscious?) I think we'll want a fully automatic system.

It's simple to stabilise him - tie a big long ribbon between his feet and let him drop like a kite.