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NASA Tests Heaviest Chute Drop Ever
Iddo Genuth writes "NASA and the US Air Force have successfully tested a new super-chute system aimed at reclaiming reusable Ares booster rockets. On February 28, 2009 a 50,000-pound dummy rocket booster was dropped in the Arizona desert and slowed by a system of five parachutes before it crashed to the ground. The booster landed softly without any damage. This was possibly the heaviest parachute drop ever, and NASA is planning to perform even heavier drops of up to 90,000 pounds in the next few months."
How much would that stage weigh empty? I know it was supposed to launch 500 tons to orbit (about the equivalent payload of 4 Saturn V rockets).
...does that commercial jet weigh?
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Afraid not. Parachutes work by increasing air drag. An incoming asteroid would be moving at something like 30 miles per second. The parachute would only have at most a couple of seconds to work. Having said that, if you had a boundary case of an asteroid that would lose a considerable portion of its energy to the atmosphere, but still have enough to cause significant property damage, then you could attach an inflatable balloon (I believe they call it a "ballute") to the front to increase the cross-sectional area of the asteroid, so it would lose more energy to the upper atmosphere. Those asteroids are probably too infrequent to bother planning for.
When will America start using SI units as the standard? Pounds don't mean anything to me.
Those asteroids are probably too infrequent to bother planning for.
That's it. You've just chosen our doom.
Qxe4
Maybe someday I'll be able to take up skydiving after all!
Recovering, fixing, and verifying the booster is an expensive proposition. How much does the recovered booster actually cost? The entire reusable Shuttle idea was kind of dumb because it was cheaper to stick with expendable launch vehicles than drag a huge piece of deadweight into space every time. What is the difference here? (Seriously.)
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Yeah, but when you use an alias like Karganeth you're Totally speaking a language I understand! Now I have to go dig my Orcone out of his storage pen and take him for a run in the dog park....
Seriously, this is a useless measurement, it's way over things I know about. I need it in something practical, like how many libraries of congress is it?
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Not after the fuel burns out.
At roughly 140,000 lbs, they're still out of reach.
There'd have to be a lot of them. After the first thousand or so, I'd be like "Ok, I'm tired of this. Let's break out the parachutes."
Since I know a thing or two about conversions, I've looked this up for you. The answer is the following: 50,000 (British) pounds is roughly 53,823 euros.
I don't know what the answer is for Canadian pounds though... Sorry!
My first thought was that this had something to do with the new waste recovery system. Ever since the Pizza Hut pastas came out, I've been a ready and willing contributor of test samples.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
~2.2 pounds/Kg so off the top of my head that's about 22.7 Tonnes. Of course it depends what type of pounds your talking about as there are lots.
WTF? If it "landed softly" it didn't "crash".
50,000-pound dummy rocket booster was dropped [...] This was possibly the heaviest parachute drop ever
Like if Soviet Russia never dropped 20+ tons tanks on the chutes still in the seventies...
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
How can it "crash to the ground" and "land softly" all in the same paragraph...?
No sig today...
I'm curious about the engineering reasons for using one really big chute instead of a cluster of smaller ones as on the Apollo command module.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Respectfully disagree. The damage done by an incoming asteroid is primarily from all that potential energy arriving at the Earth. Even if you could attach a parachute to "lose more energy to the upper atmosphere" our planet still loses.
This is the same reason why nuking the asteroid into dust won't help, if all those tiny particles still hit us.
The original press release is here.
This is pretty old news. If you want up to date news from NASA, subscribe to the RSS feed.
More importantly, how can the submitted article say the rocket "crashed" yet then immediately afterward say it landed softly. Are those two terms not mutually exclusive?
I suppose one could have a soft "crash landing" in an airplane, with the definition of a "crash landing" being: An unscheduled landing due to mechanical problems. But in this case, the parachute system apparently worked flawless ly, exactly as it was designed. So even the loosest definition of "crash" would not fit.
Can someone please fix the article?
Perhaps to this:
Thanks.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I realize it is a very large object so perhaps the answer is no. I'm just curious. Whenever I made rockets as a kid I lost them in the damn trees after the first launch because of that blasted parachute. It took so long to get the decals just right too... "It's going to land on my house!" "Don't worry, it's going to land softly." "Oh, ok." *crunch*
I want to see flyback boosters! There was a design they had for the shuttle boosters that would replace them with liquid-fueled models and they would also come equipped with jet engines. Launches as a liquid-fueled rocket, separates from the shuttle stack, deploys swing wings (which were flush with the airframe at launch) and fire up the conventional jets to make a powered return flight, landing at the Cape pretty as you please.
I think they scrapped this plan because it would be too much development for a program near the end of its life but you'd think it would be viable for the boost stages of newer vehicles. The first stage has got to be the heaviest, most expensive part of the stack. The refurb cost on the shuttle makes you think it might just be cheaper to throw it away but maybe we could actually save some money with better engineering on something like this?
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Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
So. We're back to parachutes. While I suppose it's better than just letting the boosters crash, we're still not where we need to be. The age of the rocket is over, dammit, and serious work needs to be done on the next generation earth-to-orbit vehicles.
This means space planes (The X-prize made it out of the atmosphere, if not the gravity well, on a private sector budget) or cool stuff like the Delta Clipper.
Parachutes in the year 2009 is not a re-entry mechanism worthy of the manpower and money NASA has at its disposal.
I've never understood this argument. Let's take a look at this: Every day, THOUSANDS of tiny meteorites impact the atmosphere. Of that, only a tiny fraction ever reach the ground. The vast majority of them burn up in the atmosphere. Of the ones that reach the ground, a tiny fraction of the original tiny fraction actually impact on land. A tiny fraction of the tiny fraction of the tiny fraction land somewhere in a populated area. A tiny fraction of the tiny fraction of the tiny fraction of the tiny fraction do property damage. and the amount that actually injure or kill someone? Well, the chance is so minuscule as to be laughable.
Yet somehow, utilizing one of our Weapons of Mass Destruction to actually SAVE lives by obliterating a "Chicxulub" sized asteroid into "burn up in atmosphere" sized chunks is somehow supposed to be more dangerous? What?
While I realize that it's impossible to predict precisely how a given asteroid would respond to being blasted with a nuke, Knowing that a large asteroid is about to strike, I would much rather take my chances with a bunch of smaller pieces striking earth. The math says we would be MUCH more likely to survive a bunch of "Meteor Crater Arizona" sized meteors landing randomly around the earth than one "Chicxulub" strike.
Somehow I think that the scientists predicting this are just putting "anti-nuke" politics ahead of protecting the planet.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
...before it crashed to the ground. The booster landed softly without any damage.
It's only a joke that any crash you can walk away from is called a landing. So did the chutes not work and the thing crashed? Or did they work and it landed? Make up your mind!!!!
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Now they can give those birds a rest!
Dan
Reminded me of this quote from Raising Arizona.
"Well, which is it, young feller? You want I should freeze or get down on the ground? Mean to say, if'n I freeze, I can't rightly drop. And if'n I drop, I'm a-gonna be in motion. You see... "
11. Everything is air-droppable at least once.
-Seven Rules of Highly Effective Pirates
I drank what? -- Socrates
I have had it with these xxxing asteroids in this xxxing upper atmosphere!
Para-Flite's MegaFly, for example, is a 30,000 lb payload guided parachute system (GPS-steered to land at a designated LZ), with a variant of it being tested up to, IIRC, 42,000 lbs, with 50,000 lbs being a goal. It's still basically a development system, but similar systems are regularly used for 8,000 and 10,000 lb payloads.
Granted, airdrop aerodynamic issues are different than booster recovery issues, but it's still worth noting that 50,000 lbs isn't necessarily as huge as it seems relative to the existing technology.
Personally I'm with the 'nuke it out of the sky' school of thought, but you have to understand that a large portion of the energy will still hit the earth.
A single solid asteroid hitting the earth will release the kinetic energy, mostly into the ground, creating a big shockwave, earthquakes, etc.
The remains of an asteroid that has been nuked will still hit the earth with all that kinetic energy (minus a tad from the Nuke), however since it's now small particles it will be unlikely to damage the earth, it will simply add all that energy to the atmosphere. The result will likely be a huge jump in temps around that area, probably for a 500mile radius. Eventually the energy will dissipate and things will get back to normal.
Basically it's the difference between a laser and a heat-lamp, both could put out the same amount of energy, but one is focused on a single spot causing destruction, the other is dissipated over an area causing general warming.
It would be interesting to see someone calculate the amount of energy dumped into the atmosphere and what the effect would be (how high the temps would jump, the potential of weather disruption, the amount of radioactive material from the nuke that would follow the rest of the asteroid back, etc). Just to make a complete comparison between a ground strike by an asteroid and a general dumping of the energy into the atmosphere.
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AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
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Sixty years later, NASA manages an extra 10000- lbs. Wake me when they manage 100000 lbs.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I thought this too (that the English don't use English units).
But now I've become a Top Gear addict. And Jeremy definitely talks in miles per hour. And Hammond does vehicle weights in pounds.
I seen it on youtube. It must be so.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
Better than a marshmallow man, right?
You make an excellent point, but you also fail to take into consideration how much energy will not be transferred via the asteroid bits that simply miss the earth due to being blasted off into space by the force of the nuclear detonation. It just seems logical that reducing a large single mass strike down to a smaller mass spread out over a wide area is going to be significantly less damaging. Also, any heat transferred to the atmosphere is going to be transferred primarily to the upper atmosphere, where it is much more likely to simply bleed back into space.
Also, if the choice is between being exposed to a laser vs being exposed to the same amount of energy in a heat lamp form over several days (or weeks, or months) then thank you, I'll take the heat lamp.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Where is my super-chute?
--- Mercutio was right.
You graduated! Yer full-fledged tank paratroopers!
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/938744/
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
NASA originally wanted the 2 part airplane/spacecraft. They really were going to use expendable rockets for cargo (such as Saturn), while using the craft similar to Scaled Composites (the carrier aircraft would have been different). Nixon nixed that idea and pushed their working with the air force on a space truck.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why don't we use multiple nukes launched in series, use a few large ones to bust of the asteroid, with a few smaller yield warheads to blast the chunks into outbound trajectories from Earth.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The asteroid loses, the Earth is much more massive than it is. Of course we may lose as a side affect as well.
Honestly I take issue of the whole tiny particle thing. Tiny particles will be deflected by, or burned up in teh atmosphere pretty readily. Oh wow, nice pretty light show for a few hours. I can deal with that. The atmosphere is massive and can easily absorb the extra heat. Not to mention you have a heck of alot more of an affected area to absorb the strike. The whole "its solely about mass, which is essentially the same" is simplistic and used by people whow ant to appear smart to those who aren't. Real life is a bit more complex a system than HS Physics test questions.
Swing wings proved to be a combination of too fragile, too prone to mechanical failures, and too much weight to be practical or efficient or economical enough.
In simple terms: a Rube Goldberg contraption.
this is why we need rocket motors on the moon to adjust the orbit and make it act as a shield.... movie rights on their way.
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There's no air pressure to blast against. Unless you drill the nuke deep into the asteroid first, there will be a hopeful flash of light and a lasting disappointment.
A small part of the asteroid might vaporize and likely there will be cracks and dislodged chunks. They will, however, merrily continue straight on their Earthbound route of doom.
Small consolation is that when a large asteroid hits the Earth it will be so fast and so utterly undetected beforehand that you probably won't notice it. Unless you are on the other side of the planet. Then you might suffer a couple of weeks before you die.
Wasn't dropping bombs in space for propulsion the basic design of the Orion Project?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The damage done by an incoming asteroid is primarily from all that potential energy arriving at the Earth.
By the time that asteroid touches measurable atmosphere, most of that potential energy is now kinetic energy. And I speak of asteroids small enough that most of the energy of the asteroid can be transfered to the atmosphere.
Past a certain cross-sectional density (mass per unit area), it doesn't matter if the asteroid is solid or dust, most of the energy is going into the ground. Sure the atmosphere has considerable mass, but get a large enough asteroid, then the mass of the intervening atmosphere is insignificant.
Yes, it was. It was supposed to eject the remains of the bomb into a focussed jet of debris. For that purpose it had to have special blast chambers of precise dimensions. And after all that, there had to be quite a few detonations to get the (small) craft moving anywhere at speed. A single blast won't do it.
There are quite a few unsolved issues, not the least the material of the blast chamber which had better last a long time.
Detonating a bomb on the side of an asteroid will at best transfer the momentum of half the original bomb. That's "not very heavy" times "quite fast" at the bomb side, versus "very, very massive" times "quite fast" on the asteroid side.
The asteroid would laugh in your face if you tried.
Those asteroids are probably too infrequent to bother planning for.
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Slashdot - I went there to fix their grammar that they're so bad at.
It partly depends on how far away it is from earth when we discover it.
If we can get it when it's at the same distance as the moon we only need to divert it about one degree. At larger distances even smaller diversions are needed.
If going for a bomb though it seems the best option would be to try and blow a chunk off the side.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
and pics
there had to be quite a few detonations to get the (small) craft moving anywhere at speed. A single blast won't do it.
now my quote from the wikipedia article on the machine you're talking about
The smallest 4000 ton model planned for ground launch from Jackass Flats, Nevada had each blast add 30 mph (50 km/h) to the craft's velocity.
If you call a 4000 spaceship small, i don't want to know what would be big for you.... As a side note, you're somewhat right, as the nukes had a built in reaction mass that "pushed" the ship. But the part about "blast chambers of precise dimensions" is a bit off too, a huge plain shield of a special material isn't a blast chamber and doesn't have precise dimensions at all (it just has to be huge enough to protect the ship).
As someone once pointed out (Dan Alderson?), when dealing with an incoming asteroid above a certain size, it ceases to matter whether the earth has an atmosphere or not, except to us. It just will not be spending much time there.
Impact energy is roughly proportional to the diameter cubed (volume or mass). All of those tiny asteroids that hit every day just do not add up to all that much. The damage to the earth's biosphere will be roughly proportional to the energy transferred which actually makes a water impact worse than a land impact unless you happen to be under it. For civilization, either can be catastrophic just because of weather effects. An impact like the one in Arizona is small on this scale although no doubt bad for the locals.
next time, it'll be 90,000.
Your mum is planning to do a test drop now?
Like a hot potato?
I/my network have asbestos mittens, dawg, so 'drop it when it's hot', is just an excuse, not an answer.
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There is a limit to the 'g-forces' the average/mean human being can withstand...or will tolerate commercially.- this is the 'moving limit' that must be addressed.
Give up your inertial compensator design, and we(/.) may agree with you.
Without some form of 'inertial compensator' tech, your comment falls into the 'Hand Waving' category.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
What about space parachutes?
All jokes aside, giant solar sails that latch onto the asteroid and open up.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Pardon the (very) rough math..
Escape velocity for Earth is roughly 25000 mph. At 30 mph / detonation, that takes > 830 detonations.
Low earth orbit requires a velocity of roughly 17500 mph, or > 580 detonations
Geostationary orbit requires a velocity of about 6800 mph, or > 225 detonations
That is a LOT of kaboom going on, and while I'm sure it'd be a hell of a ride, and a hell of a sight to see, I'll stick to plain old chemical rockets.
If you have plenty of time, this should be a good way to move asteroids. I got the impression we were discussing last ditch efforts (parachutes, nukes, hiding in a hole on the other side of the planet, etc).
A small part of the asteroid might vaporize and likely there will be cracks and dislodged chunks. They will, however, merrily continue straight on their Earthbound route of doom.
A moderately large nuke (say 10MT) placed inside a 1 km diameter asteroid will most assuredly blow it into small pieces - just watch the film of the test of the Spartan missile warhead done in Alaska ca 1970 - or watch the film of the Sedan test (100kT). The detonation only needs to occur a few hours before impact to prevent the majority of the material from hitting earth.
Given a few months warning, all you need is a good shove - and that can be done by a close in detonation vaporizing the nearby surface.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Thank you so much. It bugged the hell out of me when I read the article. Those terms are mutually exclusive and nonsensical in the article.
I have just about given up on the dual standard for ASIC area.
Having only the choice between mils^2 or mm^ I have decided to
do all my measurements in pico-acres.
FWIW - 1 pico-acre is darned close to 2*Pi square mils :-)
The reason I called the ship small, is because it is a small craft compared to the incoming asteroids we were talking about.
I was wrong about the blast chamber, I stand corrected. I'll look into the huge plain shield material, because (without having done the research) I think that would be a major challenge.