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."

Comments

Re:Astroid Net?

[khallow]

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.

1 Question

[Karganeth]

When will America start using SI units as the standard? Pounds don't mean anything to me.

Re:1 Question

[quenda]

When will America start using SI units as the standard?

In NASA's case, it would take something big to make them see sense. Like, say, loosing a major space probe.

Re:1 Question

[quenda]

Sorry - unfair. NASA has been using SI units for many years. It was Lockheed Martin that fucked up on the Mars orbiter. Even the English do not use English units any more for anything more important than beer glass sizes. Actually, that is important. I've seen some sneaky Australian bars serve US-sized "pints", which are significantly smaller than Imperial pints.

Re:1 Question

[bakes]

Here we have a situation where a single large country - with too much power and inertia in these matters - is pointedly ignoring what the rest of the world is doing, and forcing the use of an arcane, unwieldy, incompatible standard on the rest of us.

Thank goodness this sort of thing doesn't happen in the IT industry.

Re:1 Question

[phantomfive]

The ones who care already do. In some cases, it is easier to use the empirical system, for example, I can't imagine having to do construction with millimeters, but 1/8 and 1/16 inch are the perfect tolerances of precision when framing a house. The millimeters are just too hard to see because they're so close together. Try it sometime. I guess in Europe they must use them, so it must be doable (or maybe that's why they use bricks so much in construction instead of wood!)

In other cases it's easier to use the SI units, like if you are a scientist trying to calculate the velocity of things falling. People who need to do this already DO use SI units.

Finally, there are times when it doesn't really matter which one you use, like when you are weighing yourself, does it really matter if you use kilograms or pounds? Not really. The effort to change there just isn't worth it for most people. If we talked to Europeans more often, it might be, but.......

Incidentally, it isn't just Americans. Other countries use a mix of measurements as well. For example, in El Salvador, they use centimeters to measure their height, kilograms to measure their weight, and liters to measure their water, and gallons to measure their gas. I believe Taiwan uses some traditional measurements as well.

Re:1 Question

[nickgrieve]

Metric, motherfucker, do you speak it?

Re:1 Question

[c6gunner]

Here we have a situation where a single large country - with too much power and inertia in these matters - is pointedly ignoring what the rest of the world is doing, and forcing the use of an arcane, unwieldy, incompatible standard on the rest of us.

Sheesh, you Esperanto guys just never give up ...

Re:1 Question

[Hal_Porter]

An American pint is actually a copy of a British pint in 1707. The British later changed over to Imperial in 1824.

We had a choice between Liberty and More Beer. I'm still not sure we chose wrong.

Re:1 Question

[somersault]

I believe the unit was standardised on the weight of Winston Churchill's right testicle.

Re:1 Question

[MichaelTheDrummer]

285ml Glass
- Known as a either a pot or a middy, depending on what state you're in, in all states of Australia except for SA
- SA calls this glass a Schooner

425ml Glass
- Called a Schooner everywhere except for SA
- Called a pint in SA, except for in Irish pubs

570ml Glass
- Called a pint everywhere in Australia, except for SA
- Called an Imperial Pint, or IP in SA, except in Irish pubs where it is just a Pint.

And there you have it.

Re:1 Question

[OolimPhon]

An Imperial ton is 2000 lbs(pounds)
An Imperial ton is 20 cwt (hundredweight)
A hundredweight is 100 pounds
The US uses pounds because it sounds bigger IMHO

In the US, maybe. In the UK:
An Imperial Ton is 2240 lbs
A Hundredweight is 112 lbs

Sounds like the US uses small measures because it seems like things weigh more/are bigger over there.

Same goes for pints/gallons.
US pint = 16 fl. oz. UK pint = 20 fl oz. No wonder your cars get so few miles/gallon. No wonder your petrol (sorry, gas) is so cheap.

Re:Cool - now how much ...

[whong09]

Cool? Try hot. As in dropping it like it's hot.

Re:Cool - now how much ...

[tweak13]

Well, some of the larger 747 models have a maximum takeoff weight of over 900,000 pounds. I wouldn't expect ballistic recovery systems for them just yet.

Re:Astroid Net?

[phantomfive]

Those asteroids are probably too infrequent to bother planning for.

That's it. You've just chosen our doom.

Thank you NASA!

[Morkalin]

Maybe someday I'll be able to take up skydiving after all!

Re:Thank you NASA!

[Lord Lode]

Your mom will.

Re:What Is The Upside To Reusing The Booster?

[berglin]

But then we wouldn't have known how to build a reusable shuttle, which I'm sure left some residual science in other fields as well.

Some things are worth doing just for the sake of it.

How many libraries of congress?

[definate]

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?

Heaviest chute drop?

[GodfatherofSoul]

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.

Re:Cool - now how much ...

[Hal_Porter]

Well over 350,000 pounds Boeing 767 so don't get any ideas.

Planes would probably break up as well. Great that you attached to the mid section but you'll probably loose either the front 3rd or the rear as the thin cabin torsions apart.

If you could guarantee the front third would survive it would help sell business class tickets in these troubled times.

crashed softly?

[1u3hr]

it crashed to the ground. The booster landed softly...

WTF? If it "landed softly" it didn't "crash".

Original NASA press release

[smoker2]

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.

Re:What Is The Upside To Reusing The Booster?

[AikonMGB]

The shuttle concept in an of itself is not a terrible idea, however it got horribly warped by the Air Force's unrelenting requirements (i.e. payload bay size, etc.) and morphed into something horrendously inefficient.

There are certain parts of rockets that lend themselves much more to re-use than others. In this case, I believe the intent for Ares rockets is to replace the nozzle each flight -- they decided it was cheaper to build consumable thruster nozzles for each flight than to re-process the expensive, intricate cooling designs for keeping a nozzle in good enough shape to use again.

Aikon-

Re:A good start

[d3ac0n]

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?

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.

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:

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 landed softly without any damage.

Thanks.

to hell with parchutes

[jollyreaper]

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?