The Fan Experiments

In lieu of Phoenix's upcoming (temporary!) departure and longing for the 'good ol' days', I figured I'd step in an post a few stupid thoughts...you know, cause that's how I do. So, first, I think that I would like to become a airplane pilot so that I could throw stuff out and see what happens. I'm specifically thinking about fans for this one. You know, like the big square kind. I think it would be pretty neat to throw one out and have its blades push air up towards the sky so that it would accelerrate down to the ground faster. My guess is that it would reach whatever terminal velocity is for a fan and then reach a sort of equilibrium because the air passing through the blades would be going the same speed as the air outside the casing. You would probably have to attach some kind of rigid tail structure to it so that it wouldn't start flopping around all willy nilly. One foreseeable problem with this would be that if there isn't some force to counter the energy of the fan spinning, the casing will spin the opposite direction. Eventually, it this whole mess will maybe reach some kind of equillibrium as stated earlier. Another thing that might be cool would be to skydive while holding the fan. I wonder what kind of lateral distance you could cover if you held it out in front of you, a la Superman. Probably not much, but I think you might get like a hundred yards out of it. Another cool fan experiment would be to make a parachute out of one of those big industrual type fans. Like, have it point down so that it would be pushing against the flow of the air as you descend. You'd probably need a whole matrix of industrial fans to get any kind of decelleration out of it. Plus, when you start strapping a matrix of industrial-sized fans on your back, you are really asking for trouble.