I'm in no way a HB but this is a great site for information.

Anyway, were the parachutes used on Apollo or for that matter the Space Shuttle, made of ordinary parachute material (nylon??) or something more exotic? Also, did the parachutes need to be kept warm in storage during their time in space?

thanks

This probably should go in the Q&A section unless you're leading to something conspiratorial.

Are you leading to something conspiratorial?

According to a quick google search, there were a number of different parachutes used for different stages and/or purposes.

"The parachute landing system includes a high altitude drogue parachute, cable guillotines, a pilot parachute, a main parachute, a bridle assembly, attachment and disconnect assemblies, mortar assemblies, reefing cutters, displays and controls."
http://www.apollosaturn.com/geminiNR/sec9.htm

If you go to that site it says they were a nylon material... I don't know the details though.

Someone useful will probably be here to help shortly.

__________________
The left hand knows full well what the right hand is doing, but quietly ignores it.

And that certainly wouldn't be me

In the Apollo 13 movie, they referred to heating the parachutes prior to deployment, from here:
On a more technical note, I found The Apollo Parachute Landing System, but couldn't find any reference to heating apparatus. Actually, page 18 says :
Isn't it great, the amount of information around

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I have two items that were given to me circa 1990 to use in some way,
but I never made use of either:

A ballute, nominally a cross between a balloon and a parachute, one metre
in diameter, made of dacron, in international orange. I don't know what it
was specifically intended for, but in general ballutes are used at very high
altitude before a full parachute is opened.

Recovery Systems Design Guide
December 1978
Irvin Industries Inc
California Division
Gardena, California
Technical Report AFFDL-TR-78-151
Final report for period June 1975 to June 1978
Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory
Air Force Wright Aeronautical Laboratories
Air Force Systems Command
Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio

Paperback, 458 pages. Everything about parachute recovery.
581 references listed. Lots of tables, graphs, diagrams.
I haven't read it.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Jeff. I think the high altitude balut adds stability to the descent profile by putting a small ballute out a short distance from the craft. It then adds a moment that keeps the heat shield aligned on the descent path where greater air turbulence gives more buffeting as the module reaches lower/denser levels of the atmosphere. pete

__________________
A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

to spoons: in no way was this meant to be conspiratorial; i stated as much in the first sentence. i feel slightly insulted by being thought of being a conspiratorial. sorry, i know this sounds snippy. i haven't been on for some time but i've found that the conspiracy section is great for general apollo info, (let me add my kudos to jay utah and no offense to others). i didn't know the Q&A for space covered apollo. thanks for replying.

and thanks to all for replying; it was more info than i expected

Pete,

When I said that I don't know what the ballute was specifically intended for,
I meant that I don't know what specific type of vehicle or other object it was
made to be connected to. It might be a general-purpose piece of equipment
or it might have been designed for some specific type of mission. I suppose
it might have been made for returning scientific instruments on high altitude
sounding rockets or balloons, but that is just speculation.

It really isn't the sort of thing that is useful to have handy just in case I or
a neighbor should happen to need one in the middle of the night when all the
parachute stores are closed. Nevertheless, I'm prepared!

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

I wasn't suggesting you were, kittyhawk, I was just asking because you posted it in that section. Since you've pointed out that you didn't know the Q&A section could handle that sort of issue the whole thing makes a little more sense.

You seem very sensitive to what was implied - understand I meant no offense, it was a reasonable question, that's all. You did suggest you're not an HBer, it's just that if you dig through the archives a statement like this is not that uncommon a way to start a hoax thread.

Be cautious of assuming I (or in the future, anyone else) was having a go at you - text based interaction can be rather floored that way.

Anyway, have a nice day.

__________________
The left hand knows full well what the right hand is doing, but quietly ignores it.

So - no answer as to what the parachutes were made of?

I suspect it's the same nylon used in military parachutes. Other fabrics such as PET (dacron polyester) are both lighter and stronger, but the primary benefit of nylon is that it stretches quite a bit which is vital during opening shock (when the parachute first deploys), as that drastically reduces peak stresses on both the chute and the payload. As a result, the entire system is usually lighter.

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

All I could find was "nylon".

I admit, I was only searching at work in between tasks, so I wouldn't say my search was exhaustive.

I imagine this is one Jay, sts60 or someone else heavily involved in that sort of stuff could tell us off the top of the head.

"So all it took was tinfoil and parachute pants!"

__________________
The left hand knows full well what the right hand is doing, but quietly ignores it.

If nano materials could be introduced, just how large can a parachute be? Enough to land a small asteroid whole?

That would be fantastic, for research, mining and I guess a bunch of other uses. Planetary protection?

You'd want to practice it with moon impacters first while perfecting technology.

Would that idea actually be feasible? Nanomachutes?

__________________
The left hand knows full well what the right hand is doing, but quietly ignores it.

I'd think it'd be more practical to aim it for a remote, water letdown. If you do want to slow it down a bit, just nuke it enough to fracture it into thousands of house-sized chunks just as it's entering the atmosphere. You'd get a bit "WHOOSH! splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash..."

Instead of a BOOM.

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Ah, but how do you retrieve the pieces, whether for scientific, mining or other purposes (paperweights, substitutes for Rubber Ducky "space-rock makes bath-time fun!" etc)?

I know where you're heading with this - trained dolphins! No?

__________________
The left hand knows full well what the right hand is doing, but quietly ignores it.

The Apollo parachutes were made of nylon and packed in a vacuum. A hydraulic ram forced them into a suitcase-size volume with a compression force of 300 psi. The resultant parachute pack had the the density of wood. Source: History of Manned Space Flight, by David Baker.

They were ejected with a morter in a specific sequence. I don't have info on the temperature control in a packed state, but I'm sure it was controlled.

It would have had to have been, as reentry temps would have melted it, while the freezing temps of space makes it very brittle.

I would think temp-insulating from space while pressure-insulating it from the crew compartment might have sufficed. If not, thermal heating would have been required for a while before reentry.

While parachutes have been used to retard bombs for decades, they tend to have an unfavorably high failure rate at high velocities. If dropped at low level (less than about 1,000' to 2,000') the resulting fragmentation pattern can damage or destroy the dropping aircraft. Even though there's supposed to be a safety which doesn't release without the opening shock of the chute, as we've seen from Tog's thread about the events at Hill AFB, safety devices aren't 100%.

The services developed the Tail Retarding Device (MK-15 Snakeye) for the Mk 82, 500-lb bomb. Mated together, they were simply called "Mk 82 Snakeyes," due to the TRD, the usual twin bomb drop performed by fighters, and their significantly increased accuracy.

Ballutes were developed by Goodyear in 1958 as a more reliable alternative to parachutes. It's reduction in frontal area provided for a reduced opening shock, significantly reduced failure rate, and more predictable ballistics than parachute-retarded weapons.

The Mk 82 AIR variant uses the cheaper and more reliable ballutes (BSU49/B AIR).

A ballute stabilizer was chosen for the Gemini program. The remainder of the reentry vehicles, to the best of my knowledge, use ring-slot parachutes, originally developed after WWII, as stabilization drogues.

The final descent stages of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo used the ring sail parachute, those huge red and white parachutes so famous in the news reels and photos.

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

With all this talk of spacecraft parachutes, I purchase a 60" pilot chute for kicks and grins! Probably use it either as a kite (think parasailing) or to play with off some cliff.

ETA: Not personally...

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

I was thinking of having a ballute at the 'front' of the asteroid, with parachutes around the ring of the harness protected from re-entry heat by the ballute, which can then be foam-filled and used as a float. The asteroid hunk can then be towed to home port.

Why? Let it splash down and mine what's left. Loads cheaper.

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

A thought occurs. Do asteroids spin, or tumble, on their way through an atmosphere rather than have a point which would continue to be the "front"?

If so this could be critical to the types of designs you could have.

__________________
The left hand knows full well what the right hand is doing, but quietly ignores it.

If you could attach a recovery system to an asteroid and alter its orbit to
hit the Earth at the desired location, you could also control its rotation.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Piggyback: We have the technology to control the rotation of any and all asteroids in our solar system.

We do not have the technology to parachute any but the very smallest (1/1,000,000, if that) of them to Earth.

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

I have a (flown) Apollo Command Module Main parachute (along with its affiliated Pilot Parchute and Deployment bag (part of the CM ELS), within my larger collection of spacecraft technology. I have included pictures and detailed the materials used in its construction on my website on this page: http://www.spaceaholic.com/apollo_artifacts.htm

Of note..it is looking like the Earth Landing System on the newly designed Orion Capsule, will closely emulate the ELS Parachute system used on apollo.

Jeff...I would be interested in seeing images of the ballute..can you forward to me?

Many thanks -
Scott Schneeweis

http://www.SPACEAHOLIC.com/
spaceaholic@gmail.com

Hello, Scott!

Fabulous web page! Amazing details, great images I haven't seen before.
Even some parts of the Apollo CM I never heard of, like what appears to
be a safety cover that swings down over the two RCS engines at the top
of the capsule. I'll have to dig out the photos I took of the Apollo 11 CM
and see if I can spot that.

I just happened to get a glance at the ballute the other day while looking
for something else. I don't have a digital camera, but when I get one or
get access to one I'll send a picture to you.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Thanks Jeff..

All the artifacts shown on the website are physically stored in/at my house (including the Apollo components) so if you need me to shoot any additional images from this end let me know.

I think the "cover" you are refering to would be the Command Module forward Apex cover/heatshield which was jettisoned just prior to drogue deployment....however the SE-8 RCS thrusters remained uncovered once the boost-protective cover was jettisoned during the launch phase of the spacecraft with the launch escape tower (there were 12 of these SE-8's installed and I have an example of one in the collection as well)

Look forward to receiving pics from you of that Ballute when available..

Scott

That cover I referred to was just something in a diagram, which appears
to be on hinges. It is labeled "reaction control engine protector". I can't
tell what it actually is, though. I spent quite a bit of time looking at the
photos of your artifacts, but just happened to notice that particular thing
(which of course you don't have) in the diagram.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Ah....the "protector" is actually a static structural member which provides protection from the drogue deployment mortars on either side of the Pitch RCS engines and the steel riser lines running from the main parachute canopies to the "flower pot" just behind the RCS engines when the chutes are deployed.

I have attached an image of the actual assembly to this email (Installed on Columbia)

Scott

Attached Images

columbia_bar.jpg (129.1 KB, 7 views)

Try these.

By the way - congratulations! Your site made it into my small, but powerful BAUT Resources collection of links!

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.