I just now got a chance to watch the Superbowl stunt on YouTube. It does appear that the mechanism is far below the performer at the time of the jump, which was my initial thought. Apparently, she must have jumped into a shadow where trained technicians caught her briefly, and then most likely had technicians on a platform in the dark double check everything before she descended the remaining 150 plus feet. Otherwise she would have been swinging like a pendulum. And it seems obvious that she would have needed assistance to climb up on the platform to begin with with all that gear.
Note in the video below, the 2 tiny steel cables are very slack and hanging beneath her. It would have killed her, had there been a "impact load" or sudden jolt. I bet the "wire ropes" were made of an expensive alloy. I bet the cables were tested over and over again, and they most likely had some stunt people do this a hundred times in a warehouse or hanger, and probably at least twice at Houston's NRG Stadium in the days before. Plus, she certainly would have had to have practiced that jump somewhere, and done lots of simulations. Meaning that single jump and its preparations was probably close to a million dollars. And the insurance was probably unbelievably outrageous. I bet the entire costume jacket and the harness were one piece. Only the buckle and 2 attachments are visible. Either way, it is very slick engineering. I am very curious what the plan was, if she had hit the ground hard, or completely free-fall. My guess is there were certified engineers working the winch mechanism, and they had some kind of system in place to monitor something that was not nominal, with a high safety redundancy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSapZ0fkstg#t=48.551541 Ref: https://www.eriggingsupply.com/1-2-dia-8x25-iwrc-rotation-resistant-bright-wire-rope-per-foot/ The rest of this post is not about vertical stuff, but about the performer: Her music does not do anything for me, but that is mainly because I didn't grow up listening to her or that type of music. However, I do like most if not all of the acoustic versions ( an example is below ). But she did show she was in excellent physical shape and that outfit was interesting, ( reminding me of Space Ace Frehley in 1979 ). Anyways, she obviously is going to be one of the big stars for the next few years, as she showed she was far more multi-talented than the competition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMVCiYPWY-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP8SrlbpJ5A David Locklear
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