[Carriage Hill]

Wouldn’t that suit be *glowing* from all the friction of semi-re-entry, like the shuttles and capsules did?

Too many technical things here I just don’t understand. It all worked for him though, thank God.

I got to admit that I never really heard about this much at all, until Saturday or so; I guess that I live a “sheltered” life, out here.

[sloop]

shuttles zip around much, much faster than a falling body - i imaging at 24 miles high, not freezing would be the problem

[chimera]

No. It's a matter of conservation of energy. The skydiver had potential energy (height above ground) but not much kinetic energy (started from essentially zero velocity). Returning from orbit, a spacecraft has more potential energy (higher altitude and greater mass) and a heckuva lot more kinetic energy (orbital velocity). Both “burn off” that energy returning to the Earth, but the spacecraft has a lot more to get rid of than the skydiver.