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A comment on How Mount Everest killed George Mallory. Parent comment

Re:How Mount Everest killed George Mallory by krisoft on Friday June 07, 2024 @08:03PM (#40614151)
> Oh, and in hindsight, do the first spacewalk unmanned?

That is one of the incomprehensible things for me about the early pioneers of parachute technology. Why did people throw themselves off from the Eifel tower when they could have tested and perfected the jump with a sack of potatoes or sand?

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Re:How Mount Everest killed George Mallory by mordechai9000 on Saturday June 08, 2024 @12:01AM (#40615170)
> Why did people throw themselves off from the Eifel tower

Tangential, but I think there was just one incident, and the guy was considered a crackpot even when he was alive. They thought he was going to throw a dummy off, but against all advice he insisted on doing it himself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Reichelt

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