Re: Brute force re-entry

From: dave schneider (d_schneider_at_emulex.com)
Date: 08/26/04 

To: sci-space-tech@moderators.isc.org
Date:  26 Aug 2004 10:39:47 -0700

> Michael Smith <smithm@SPAMBLOCKnetapps.com.au.retro.com> wrote:
> > navigaiter2002@aol.comSpamsuX.retro.com (Allen Meece) wrote:
> >
> > > Because nasa designed it as a Mack truck with little wings instead of
> > > going with the ultralight Rogallo Wing re-entry vessel.
> >
> > The Rogallo Wing is a modified parachute. It was developed as a
> > steerable recovery system for Gemini before finding a use as a hang
> > glider wing. It has no role in reentry.

> No role? It could have a role in civilian CATS [cheap access to space]
> vessel reentry. The reason nasa didn't go with it was because it was too
> slowly developing a folding/deployment system for the wing and it was holding
> the Gemini program back. It wasn't meeting the program's schedule.
> So there you go. Institutional priority results in bad technology.

What Michael means is that the Rogallo wing can be deployed at low
speeds, as in the final landing phases of a return from orbit, but not
at the hypersonic speeds Gemini (and the Shuttle) experienced during
"entry interface" and the upper atmosphere. It would be a major
engineering challenge to develop a deployable structure of significant
span that *could* take hypersonic speeds -- we're having enough trouble
with fixed structures.

/dps