NASA postpones flying saucer parachute test
 

Sport scale spot landing, anyone?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nasa-...-200311597.html


Bill

I wonder if the Centuri and Estes UFO/flying saucers of the late 70's and later the HPR Flying Pyramid of Death (FPOD) from 1996 had any affect on the guys that decided to put a motor in that test vehicle and launch it instead of putting it in a big shroud on a large booster.

That article did not give any idea how big the saucer is. It may be too expensive to use a booster that big on something that light?

The plan is to use a balloon to get it above most of the atmosphere, then use a rocket motor to gain speed and more altitude before deploying the special high-speed parachute.


Bill

I'm just wishing their concept and decision process was influenced on our hobby. I'm not actually suggesting that it was. ;)

I was thinking along the lines that most engineers would just say, "It's too big to launch to altitude X with a booster we can afford. Why don't we just get it up as high as we can with a balloon and drop it? Then an engineer that grew up in the 70's with a Estes/Centuri catalog in his back pocket, or the engineer that went to LDRS 15 and saw the FPOD might say, "Why don't we just stuff a big motor in the middle of it and boost it on up there? I know it'll fly cause I had a Centuri UFO when I was a kid (or I saw the FPOD fly at LDRS)!"

BTW, I believe the guys that flew the FPOD were from Florida and I think it had a better flight profile down there than at LDRS. Maybe an engineer saw it in action there or read about it on rec.models.rockets. :D

The saucer looked a bit like a Snitch in the first picture.

No doubt some of the people at NASA were influenced by the hobby. No doubt at all.


Bill

Yes, that was done by my closest pal from Tripoli Tampa. However, the 'fullscale' M version did not fly before LDRS XV, only the 'halfscale' J275 one. That, being 2ft tall, flew off a 6' rod with no problems and it did not weigh very much.

Actually, most of the infamous FPOD travelled in sections with myself and that guy in my smallish car; this kept me from taking along a larger glider I wanted to fly there.

Hard to believe that all happened 19 years ago! Always wanted to go back to the old Sod Farm in Orangeburg...still kicking myself for missing NSL. Now, looks like that site has faded into Tripoli history...RIP.

Uh, no doubt? At all? About getting the idea for this from Centuri & Estes saucers???

Have most of the old rocket experts just given up on this part of the forum, or plain left? I was surprised nobody pointed out the following before this.

NASA got the idea from..... NASA.

Actually, NASA did a re-entry "saucer" , in 1966, nearly 50 years ago. Carried up by balloon to as high as practical. Data later used for the Viking lander program aeroshells. In the early 1970's or so, someone flew a model of that , IIRC in scale at a NARAM.

So, if anything, Centuri got the idea for their saucer from NASA, than the other way around. And Estes got the idea.... from Centuri (by then they were merged anyway).

On display at White Sands "Missile Park"


After landing:



Many other interesting pics from using Google images and search string "Voyager Aeroshell test".

https://www.google.com/search?q=vik...aeroshell+test+

From the "Aeroshell" wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroshell



See other info on that wiki page.

A large practical difference between that and the new inflatable design is to achieve a much larger surface area, therefore a lot more drag for a given mass, so it decelerates to a slower velocity for a given maximum launch diameter constraint.

Some more info, pics, and even a video, at the lower 1/3 of this page:

http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/VTOLdiscs.htmli

From that page, a drawing of the flight plan is included below.

- George Gassaway

Cool Info, George.

Still gotta say Safety nearly LAST and BELOW nearly all during personal/off-work time.
If safety interferes with having a good time and fun, safety LOSES in my book.
Bottle rocket and roman-candle wars (especially between boats on a lake) are both highly entertaining AND unsafe. Count me in every time.

The ONLY time I rate Safety FIRST is at work.
No job is worth suffering physical harm over.

The article says it is the largest parachute ever deployed, which is definitely not true. It is not even the biggest ringsail parachute ever deployed.

http://www.aerodecelerator.org/publ...s/news5-99.html

Jerry

You just can't have any fun on this forum without somebody coming back from TRF to try to belittle you.

We know NASA did that. It's a new generation of engineers and scientists at NASA. Those engineers and scientists are part of the Playstation/X-box generation, not the model rocketry era. They are young enough that they may not even be influenced by MTV. As I stated earlier, it's just wishful thinking. :rolleyes: