What If You Jumped Higher and Couldn't Stop?

A Friday afternoon in October, an empty high school football field outside Chicago, 4:15 pm. You jump once, 18 inches. Then you land and jump again, twice as high. And again. And you can't stop. Every jump goes twice as high as the last one. Jump 7 clears the stadium lights. Jump 11 is as high as the Empire State Building. Jump 12 leaves the ground faster than sound. Jump 13 punches through a cloud. Jump 14 meets a skydiving plane at about 12,000 feet, jump 16 passes an airliner and Mount Everest, jump 17 sees the sky turn black in the middle of the afternoon. Jump 18 goes higher than anyone has ever skydived from. Jump 19 reaches space. Jump 21 passes the space station. Jump 24 sees all of North America at once, and comes back down as a shooting star. The numbers are real. Every height is 18 inches times two, again and again. The takeoff speeds come from that height and real gravity, which gets weaker the higher you go. The falls are slowed by the real air, thinner and thinner as you go up, so you always land at about 160 mph. The temperatures, the speed of sound, the air you'd pass out in, the horizon, the space station's orbit, the Sun setting at 5:58 pm and the Moon rising almost full are all for that place and that day, 23 October 2026. Some of it is not real. Nobody's legs could do this, and nobody could land at 160 mph and stand up. Past about a mile up, no push is enough: the air going up stops you. The film says so on screen, and from jump 14 we let you through the air on the way up. The size of the craters is our estimate; the police and the town are made up. The field is fictional, 19 miles west of downtown Chicago. Seven more jumps, and you'd go higher than the Moon. CHAPTERS 0:00 Jump twenty-five 0:08 One jump 0:25 Over the stadium lights 1:05 The Empire State Building 1:27 Faster than sound 1:57 Through a cloud 2:42 The skydivers 3:15 Lake Michigan 3:48 The airliner 4:24 A black sky 5:12 The highest skydive ever 5:58 Space 7:03 The night is coming 7:38 The space station 8:25 The Earth is a ball 8:50 Sunset from above 9:12 A shooting star 9:48 The Moon HASHTAGS #whatif #science #space #physics #3danimation