The canopy is the real instrument. It blooms above the jumper, converting a vertical rush into an airfoil problem: fabric cells pressurize, lines take load, and a wing begins to fly. Freefall can look reckless; canopy flight is where a small error acquires consequences.The popular story gets it backward. At deployment, a pilot chute extracts the deployment bag; as the ram-air canopy inflates, its ...More