Professional skydiver Luke Aikins pretty much just pulled off the stunt of a lifetime. The 42-year-old jumped out of an airplane from 25,000 feet, landing in a 100-by-100-foot net at Big Sky Ranch in Simi Vaelly, Calif. The safety net was reportedly “several stories” high.
Aikins has jumped from planes more than 18,000 times and comes from a family of skydivers, practicing the maneuver–one that includes rolling onto his back just before landing–on smaller nets for the past few months.
Aikins was nearly stopped by the Screen Actors Guild, which apparently as a professional stuntman he’s a part of, just before the attempt as they weren’t going to allow him to leave the plane without a chute. Aikins said he’d wear one and not open it but just before he jumped, the Guild lifted the ban. “I’m here to show you that if we approach it the right way and we test it and we prove that it’s good to go, we can do things that we don’t think are possible,” he said.
