Re: Oh dear, anyone want an unused parafoil?

From: Ray Schmitt (rjs41_at_comcast.net)
Date: 09/13/04

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    Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 16:45:24 -0700

    "Brian Gaff" <Briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
    news:ZlW%c.144$F73.105@fe2.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
    > Well, I hope they can salvage something from Genesis. It is indeed
    > comforting that the deployment system on the capsule is not used on manned
    > missions.
    > snip

    Well, at least not yet.

    The Gemini project spent a few years (Nov 1961 thru April 1964) trying to
    develop a paraglider so their spacecraft could land on land (like the Soviet
    Vostok) instead of splashing down. The Gemini design was a modified version
    of the Rogallo wing, an early paraglider concept. North American Aviation
    had the paraglider contract and suffered through a series of embarrasing
    failures before succeeding in landing a boilerplate Gemini spacecraft.
    Unfortunately that event happened about 2 years over schedule and, after
    spending $135M (today's bucks) on the paraglider, NASA decided to use
    splashdown for Gemini.

    Nearly 30 years later the paraglider idea was resurrected in NASA's X-38
    program. The X-38 vehicle was a 14,000-lb sub-scale model of a lifting body
    vehicle that NASA at one time hoped to use for the ISS as a crew rescue
    vehicle. The full size vehicle would weigh about 30,000 lb and accommodate 6
    persons. A 1990s paraglider design was baselined for the X-38.

    One of the bothersome problems with lifting bodies is high landing speed and
    relatively strange instability modes. A 30,000-pound vehicle like the
    operational version of the X-38 would have touched down at 300+ mph,
    compared to about 220 mph for the orbiter. On 10 May 1967 at Edwards the
    M2-F2 lifting body test vehicle, with Bruce Peterson at the controls, went
    into violent Dutch rolls at 7,000 feet altitude. The vehicle crashed before
    Peterson could regain control. He suffered serious injuries but recovered.
    The footage of that crash was used as the lead-in for "The Six-Million
    Dollar Man" TV program of the early 1970s.

    The X-38 made a few unmanned flights starting in March 1998 that verified
    the performance of its paraglider design. Unfortunately, the X-38 program
    was cancelled on 29 April 2002 with 2 years to go on its flight test
    program. So the paraglider idea is back on the shelf again. Maybe in another
    30 years......

    Later
    Ray Schmitt

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