NASA's Orion Mock-Up Fails Parachute Test 163
leetrout writes "Fox News has the story on a parachute test failing on a mock up of the new Orion spacecraft. 'This is the most complicated parachute test NASA has run since the '60s,' said Carol Evans, test manager for the parachute system at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. 'We are taking a close look at what caused the set-up chutes to malfunction. A failure of set-up parachutes is actually one of the most common occurrences in this sort of test.' Space.com has the video."
Re:Common occurances... (Score:4, Interesting)
At this stage of development? Quite possible. If you read up on the history of the X- series and our early space launches, it's quite scary.
Re:Complicated? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's simple: NASA hasn't designed a space capsule in 40 years. They've been flying refrigerators^W gliders instead. They need to get back into the groove of landing large objects with parachutes before these tests become routine again.
And then there was the Genesis probe [wikipedia.org]. That had to be the weirdest recovery scheme I've heard of yet. And on top of everything, the contractor installed the accelerometer backwards! Which tells you about how much experience NASA and its contractors has had with parachutes since the 60's.
Re:Why the parachute? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ain't it the truth.
When I was in the 82nd Airborne, we'd get a jump or two every month. In big operations (where a full regiment jumps together) you'd pretty much see at least one mae west and sundry other "minor" screw-ups.
When you have a trained parachutist on the end of the risers who can tweak them or decide to pull his reserve, it's a lot less dicey than when some "mock up" that's unable to respond to the situation drills in from 20,000 ft.
Re:Why the parachute? (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, to create a skydiving safety video, the guy simulating the malfunctions had to, at times, tie lines together because he couldn't get the malfunction to reliably happen just by mispacking. You can stuff a modern parachute into the container and not get a malfunction most of the time. It will open really bad/weird/hard, but usually works.
Body position upon opening often matters the most.
It's not exactly 'finicky. Clearly you don't know anything about this.
Re:Common occurances... (Score:1, Interesting)
You know why they're going back to the moon the way they are, don't you?
Because the current generation of NASA workers and admin look back on the shuttle as a failure, not because it IS (tho it could have done a lot more) but because they can't see the successes against the horror of the two lost crews. Nobody remembers the good things, just the video of the two accidents.
So those admins look back to when NASA could do no wrong and the flatware was golden and things just worked, and that was the Apollo era in their minds, even though Apollo had its share of tragedy and accidents and things that barely worked. But mostly it did work and that's the part people remember. They don't remember the early problems.
SO when they wanted to "do the next" thing, the current generation said, we should go and do again what the previous generation did that was so successful (even though it wasn't all success).
It's like the teenager who is determined to get and fixup the same sports car dad owned when he was younger, only the teenager will have ALL the tricked out stuff dad could only dream about.
So they are determined not only to redo it but to do it again with a ship just like the Apollo only better (in their minds, they know they can do it better just like every kid thinks it can do better than the parents at everything).
They'll even land the same way, collect rocks (again) and do damn near nothing to advance science.
We learned all this stuff in the 70's but the current generation has to learn it for themselves and there's no stopping them.
What Orion is doing is not advancing NASA or space science or anything. It's just some kids trying to prove to dad that they can do what he did, only better. And that often ends up with dad bailing junior out of jail.
The generation that follows, if the human race lives that long, will no doubt redo the shuttle "to get it right THIS time" and the cycle will repeat.
We are doomed to never leaving this planet. I am convinced of it.
Wow, you got almost every point wrong (Score:1, Interesting)
The pad abort parachutes were (Apollo) and are (Orion) the same as the re-entry parachutes. There are not two sets of parachutes. This was a precursor test to the Pad Abort 1 test scheduled for next year. After the abort system fires, the forward bay cover is removed and the same parachutes used for recovery after re-entry are used to save the capsule.
The parachutes used for Orion are virtually identical to the Apollo parachutes except larger. The drogues and mains are the same types as used for Apollo, ribbon and ringsail, respectively.
Your "explanation" of what went wrong is pure gibberish. There is no laminar airflow over a parachute. Every parachute has the suspension lines connected at the edge. Where else would you put them? Center pull-down lines are not used to help a parachute inflate, they are used to reduce the inflation forces by reducing drag during opening.
And the company making the parachutes (hint: NASA doesn't make anything) has a VERY long history of parachute design and manufacture.