Walking into the huge Skydive Spaceland hangar in Rosharon where two planes sit under its immense roof is enough to make a height-conscious person's head spin. Then owners Steve and Michelle Boyd come forward, and their confidence in the whole death-defying process spreads like a virus. You watch some films and get acquainted with the gear (an hour-long class gives all the instruction you'll need to reach the ground safely). After you find out that modern parachutes are equipped with an explosive charge that deploys the chute automatically at a preset altitude, fear begins a strange transformation into unadulterated excitement.
Careful, though, about letting all that adrenaline go to your head. After the rush of the first jump, people have been known to progress to professional skydiving levels in months. It's that addictive. But no matter how many times you take that leap of faith from a moving airplane, you still can't ignore the physics of the situation. You're still free-falling at 200 mph on a direct descent toward the earth, with only a sheet of silk and a plastic helmet to protect you.
