Um… Drop-Pack, anyone?

Those of you who've read Irreconcilable Differences may recall a skydive from suborbital space, based on THIS article, and the jump of Col. Joe Kittinger in the Excelsior III jump, August 16, 1960. One may recall that I specified a "Drop Pack" with winglets that helped Micki and Rae stabilize their flight. In my head, it looked rather like THIS. So it amuses me a great deal to see THIS picture, where Baumgardner, who is attempting to beat Kittinger's record, is wearing something not too different from the drop pack I imagined. It's admittedly a long way from covert suborbital insertion, but hey. It's a drop pack. :) Nothing much else going on. Work is proceeding apace on Brass and Steel: Inferno. I think I've finally untangled the mess of that world and understood why some things are the way they are, because the chapters are fighting me less on the way out. -JRS