Re:SpaceX and Boeing Still Need a Parachute That Always Works
by madaxe_again on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @01:45PM
(#21465609)
It’s worth noting that it’s not the parachutes that typically fail, rather, the deployment systems.
You’re packing (by hand) a large area of fabric and cord into a very small volume. You’re coating that fabric and cord with a variety of anti-stick substances, which have to be stable with extreme temperature and radiation levels, and huge vibrations.
Parachutes are deployed in several ways - springs, hydraulics, compressed gas, explosives, drogues, and combinations thereof.
For flight tests, parachutes are typically pre-stressed as though they’ve been to orbit and back. This wasn’t always the case.
So - there’s a lot of surface area to go wrong purely around the problem of getting it to eject and unfurl, before you even start to think about the parachute itself.
You’re packing (by hand) a large area of fabric and cord into a very small volume. You’re coating that fabric and cord with a variety of anti-stick substances, which have to be stable with extreme temperature and radiation levels, and huge vibrations.
Parachutes are deployed in several ways - springs, hydraulics, compressed gas, explosives, drogues, and combinations thereof.
For flight tests, parachutes are typically pre-stressed as though they’ve been to orbit and back. This wasn’t always the case.
So - there’s a lot of surface area to go wrong purely around the problem of getting it to eject and unfurl, before you even start to think about the parachute itself.