The astronauts on the ISS that are stuck and can’t parachute back to Earth… but why not?
The highest jump I could find was 39km (Stratos jump)
Is it the height from the planet? The speed of the ISS? If we wanted to design ISS escape pods, what would be required?
It’s mostly the velocity. Orbiting a planet just means having enough kinetic energy to fall toward a planet, but continually overshoot and miss. They need some way to slow down dramatically, which is usually accomplished with rocket thrusters. If they just strapped on parachutes and jumped out, they’d orbit the Earth alongside the ISS.