Watch a man jump into a net from 25,000ft without a parachute

On Saturday at approximately 5:45 p.m. local time, a man called Luke Aikins got into a plane, ascended to the lofty heights of 25,000ft, opened the door and decided to jump out. Without a parachute. 

For the next two minutes, he plummeted back to earth at 120mph keeping an eye out for a 100ft by 100ft netting somewhere on the south Californian desert. Target acquired, he rolled onto his back and waited to be swallowed by the netting that was being held up 200ft above air by a quartet of cranes.

Safely captured, he simply stood up, waved to the crowd and shrugged off falling from nearly five miles in the sky like it was no big deal. Clearly, it is a big deal, which is why you very much need to watch the footage above.

Over 1.4 million viewers watched the crazy stunt live on Fox, which sent the 42-year-old straight into the record books. 

To be fair, Luke is probably the best man for the job. He’s done over 18,000 skydives in his life, though this was his first without a parachute. And if you cast your mind back to other crazy jumps, you may remember Austrian skydiving ace and Buzz Lightyear enthusiast Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic jump from space. Well, Luke was Felix’s test dummy – employed to willingly throw himself into worst-case scenarios.

Now, who else wants a go?