The fire department uses a net.

Falling into ether? ? ? I imagine if it was a thick enough layer you could be rendered unconscious from the fumes before you hit the bottom. Yay!

I have heard that stunt men use various materials - empty cardboard boxes, mattress foam, styrofoam, etc.

This could be arranged for a large tank, but it would have to be several hundred feet tall. The top layer could be foam, then an emulsion of vegetable oil and water made possible with several tons of egg yolks, then 100 feet of oil and finally the water.

On falling the jumper, or victim, would have drowned, but he would have no broken bones or flesh damage and thus offer the mortician special problems like re-inflating him had he fallen flat on water, or hit feet or head first such that he could be buried in a pizza box.

Perhaps the apparatus could be put on wheels, outfitted with several engines and rolled around the countryside or on a boat under the Golden Gate bridge to catch suicide jumpers. It sounds like something the California State Legislature would buy.

Adrian Vance

What would this be used for? And how would it be deployed?

As I understand it, water gets its notorious impact characteristics from both its density and surface tension. (Then again, I haven't seen that Mythbusters episode where they test the "breaking fall into water with hammer" myth.) Reducing surface tension is as easy as adding salt or similar solutes. On the other hand, some liquids that are less dense than water have undesirable properties, like being flammable (ethanol) or poisonous (jet fuel causes blindness).

Water doesn't compress. People have broken their necks from diving into a pool, although the most common cause is hitting the bottom.

An RAF pilot bailed over the channel from something like 20,000 feet, during WWII, without a chute, and survived. On the other hand, suicides on the Golden Gate bridge are jumping from a relatively low height, and almost always are killed.

i am not sure i understand the purpose of your invention, as this device would not be easily movable, and you dont usually have much notice ahead of time, and almost no time to react once a person is falling. but i actully have seen this type of idea employed once, to practice ski-jumping on an olympic level they need to be able to practice all year, so during the summer they jump into a pool of aerated water, falling up to 140ft with no harm. same idea of lower density liquid, but a bit more simple than layering different density liquids, moving the massive contraption, and hoping the liquids dont mix.

Thanks for the comments everyone, i didnt mean that it would be a moveable container, just an extremely large pool that planes would fly over. The worlds largest swimming pool is over 1km in length but im guessing it would have to be much larger, even if the idea did work.

An airbag of the sort stunt men use works very well, and it's much cheaper, air being more readily available than ether.