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.

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: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: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: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.

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: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.