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Space Science

Chopper Pilots Train to Catch Space Probe 44

Posted by michael from the gotcha dept.
mav[LAG] writes "Hollywood helicopter pilots have been training for a unique catch planned for September: they will hopefully snag in midair the parachute of a capsule dropped by the Genesis project before it touches down in the Utah desert. The capsule will contain collector arrays of solar particles that should, er, shed some light on the origins of the solar system."
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Chopper Pilots Train to Catch Space Probe More

Chopper Pilots Train to Catch Space Probe

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  • Another Article (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ewithrow ( 409712 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @12:43PM (#9019894) Homepage

    Here is another article [nasa.gov] (along with a huge picture! [nasa.gov]) at the official JPL NASA website.

    • Re:Another Article (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bbuchs ( 551229 )
      Is it just me, or does that photo look fake? It looks like someone made a (crappy) mask of the parachute from another image, drew in a red line for the pole coming out the side of the chopper, and plopped it all together.

      • Re:Another Article (Score:4, Interesting)

        by p4ul13 ( 560810 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @01:03PM (#9020135) Homepage
        It does look very fake. Even stranger is the fact that the thumbnail on the left shows the same picture with a red/white/blue parachute as described in the article. The large picture shows yellow/green/red.

        Very very odd.

        • Re:Another Article (Score:3, Informative)

          by Frennzy ( 730093 )
          Er...look at the date. Those are artist's renditions of the recovery. It hasn't happened yet.

          • Re:Another Article (Score:3, Informative)

            by p4ul13 ( 560810 )
            Err, I'm quite aware of the date. The article was also discussing the test-run whish *has* happened already, and could easily have yielded real photos.

            Since they decided to use an artists rendition, the question still remains, who was the blind, armless, computer-illiterate who put that pic together?

        • Re:Another Article (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @03:28PM (#9021712)
          It does look very fake. Even stranger is the fact that the thumbnail on the left shows the same picture with a red/white/blue parachute as described in the article. The large picture shows yellow/green/red.

          Actually, it looks like it's missing the blue channel from the entire picture for some reason. That explains the color discrepancy, and why the helicopter is such a wonderfully eye-hurting shade of red.
          • Actually, it looks like it's missing the blue channel from the entire picture for some reason.

            That does not explain the color descrepancy. If there were no blue in the larger picture, then there would be no white either! The background would be yellow if there were no blue in the larger image. Also, the blue of the red-white-blue parachute would be black, not green, after taking out the blue.

            It looks photoshopped to me, but what do I know.

          • it looks like it's missing the blue channel

            Interesting guess, but no.

            They are actually two different parachutes. Look at the bottom-left corner of the chutes. The blue/white shute has a nice square corner and straight bottom. The yellow/green chute has stair-step shape fold in the corner, and the bottom is anything but straight.

            A close inspection of the large image reveals that a segment of the hook-line is invisible. It runs from the chpper to the top-right corner of the chute and dissapears "behind" i
        • Hmm, perhaps the quotation on the small thumbnail could explain it?
          The Genesis spacecraft returns to the Earth on September 8, 2004 in a dramatic mid-air capture.
          Last I checked it was still May 2, 2004...

  • Maybe it's just me ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Friday April 30, 2004 @12:44PM (#9019903) Homepage Journal
    ... but it seems like putting a little more engineering into the thing to make a softer ground landing would have been easier, and safer, than relying on this bizarre mid-air catch. The article says it will probably survive the landing even if the pilot misses; how much extra material would have been required to soften the landing enough for them to be sure?

    • Re:Maybe it's just me ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by WyerByter ( 727074 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @12:57PM (#9020066) Journal
      They have been doing bizarre mid-air catches for decades. Early spy satalites got their film to the ground by dropping them. Specially modified bombers with nets on poles sticking out of their noses would catch them in mid-air. Though I don't know why it doesn't have air-bags.
      • Well, I'll be damned -- I had no idea. Thanks for the info.

      • They have been doing bizarre mid-air catches for decades

        My failing memory is trying to tell me about a spy extraction technique I once saw on some TV show (History? Discovery?). I Googl...oops, searched but couldn't find a reference.

        Two high (25'?) poles would be set up with a cable between them, and the secret agent would don a harness and attach the harness via another cable to the "highwire". Along would come a low-flying (under the enemy radar) plane with a tailhook and essentially spring the pe

        • Re:Maybe it's just me ... (Score:4, Informative)

          by hubie ( 108345 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @12:46AM (#9031980)
          You are correct about the spy extaction. It used Robert Fulton's SKYHOOK (he was the grandson of the fameous Robert Fulton). It was used in Thunderball as well as John Wayne's The Green Berets.

          The most exciting use of it, in my opinion, was in the Arctic for Operation COLD FEET. A summary is given here [cia.gov], and a good book on it is here [modelwarships.com] (or at least a review of the book---I've read the book, by the way, and I couldn't put it down until I finished it).

          • The summary is great.
            I especially liked the section labeled "The Skyhook System".
            Apparently pigs not only have nervous systems much like humans but react with similar emotions to be being "volunteered".

      • Though I don't know why it doesn't have air-bags.

        Because those would have to survive liftoff and be light enough for there being enough fuel to accelerate and slow down the whole thing?

        Even if possible at all, adding them to the probe would, likely, have costed more than a few dozens of new helicopters...

        It is considered likely, that the results of the mission will survive the impact of the landing -- catching it in mid-air just adds some more protection. At a reasonable price.

    • Your intuition is wrong (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      - mid-air catch is a proven, reasonable technique
      - putting more engineering into the thing would make it heavier, less reliable, and more expensive to launch.
    • you know, engineering is not always about what you do, its about what you don't do.

      remember that this particular object will have to have:

      a) survived construction on earth
      b) survived launch and liftoff, and subsequent separations of other stages of the vehicle,
      c) gotten itself into the specific flightpaths and orbits and such that required it to complete its mission
      d) stay in touch with earth
      e) complete its mission
      f) get back ... blah blah blah ... &etc.

      and you want to add just 'a little more enginee
    • how much extra material would have been required to soften the landing enough for them to be sure?

      The point is that every extra gram of spacecraft mass required to "soften the landing" would had to have been launched, inserted into orbit, kickec out of orbit, and kicked back into the earth's atmosphere, along with the milligrams of actual solar wind material.

      So, you add, say, 1 kilogram (a very low estimate) of spacecraft mass, to protect the aerogel panels, you've then got to add the extra propellant

  • Not exactly unique (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Merlin42 ( 148225 ) * on Friday April 30, 2004 @12:50PM (#9019974)
    Back in the early days of spy satelites this was common practice. After a spy sat finished a roll of film it would be ejected and caught somewhere over the Pacific by a Navy pilot. IIRC they used planes and not chopers.
    • I remember reading about some early satellites that were retrieved using planes. The Discovery series comes to mind...satellite's name, not the TV channel...but I can't remember what the purpose was. This would have been somewhere around 1960 or thereabouts. The Discoveries were the first satellites to make successful reentries.
  • WTF - they can't have the military do this? I'm sure there are pilots that are more than capable.

    • Re:no military? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zangdesign ( 462534 )
      1. Because all the military pilots capable of doing this are tied up elsewhere?

      2. Because military pilots aren't trained to do crazy-ass stunt-type flying?

      3. Liability issues?

      4. PR?

      5. Because stunt pilots log more flying hours than military pilots and are therefore slightly better trained?

      6. Because no military pilot is stupid enough to do something like this?

      Pick one. Or pull it out of your butt like I did. Personally, I think #2 is probably a good reason.

    • Re:no military? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because NASA is, first and foremost, a civilian agency.

  • Kahn! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hythlodaeus ( 411441 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @12:55PM (#9020039)
    The stakes are high, because if the probe touches down it will destroy all life on Earth before reterraforming the planet.

  • Did that in 1960. (Score:5, Informative)

    by retostamm ( 91978 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @01:02PM (#9020122) Homepage
    Why is this hard?

    I understand that the early spy satellites did not have CCD's, but only Cameras, and they'd drop the Films to earth (reentry and all) and those would be caught in flight by a modified plane, developed and looked at.

    That was with Slide Rules and stuff, no serious computers then, and no helicopters, I think. Why is it hard today?

    Quote: "A special feature of the Discoverer Program was that the satellites were to eject capsules after a certain number of orbits. The capsule was supposed to reenter the atmosphere and release a parachute so that the capsule could be recovered. Specially modified aircraft were fitted with two long booms which extended from the aircraft and had a rope stretched between the tips of the booms. If everything went according to plan, the rope would catch the shrouds of the parachute of the de-orbited capsule."

    from
    http://spacecovers.com/pricelists/categori es/categ ory_satellites.htm

    • Re:Did that in 1960. (Score:5, Informative)

      by retostamm ( 91978 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @01:11PM (#9020230) Homepage
      Some better Links to how this was done:

    • Re:Did that in 1960. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RabidMonkey ( 30447 ) <canadaboy.gmail@com> on Friday April 30, 2004 @01:29PM (#9020464) Homepage
      a good description:

      "When a film canister was full, it was jettisoned back to earth
      over Hawaii in a ceramic container that deployed a parachute.
      These were retrieved in mid-air by Air Force C-119 airplanes
      (the so-called "Flying Boxcars") that were outfitted with long
      snag lines strung between twin tails. If the planes missed, the
      canisters would splash down and float in the Pacific Ocean for
      up to two days so the Navy could get to them. After two days,
      salt plugs would dissolve and the canisters would sink into the
      ocean depths to avoid unfriendly retrieval. Even so, at least
      one canister is known to have gotten into enemy hands."

      from http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2002/m ay/m15-016.shtml [virtuallystrange.net]
    • Looks like it only took them 14 tries.
    • The difference here may be the weight of the object. I doubt the spy satellite film capsules weighed 420 pounds (but I couldn't find any data on what they did weigh).

      Still the whole helocopter stunt does seem to be a complicated way to deorbit a payload...why not just make it waterproof, give it a bigger parachute, and have it splash down in the Pacific?

    • That was with Slide Rules and stuff, no serious computers then, and no helicopters, I think. Why is it hard today?

      Because real engineering (not what Slashdot readers consider to be engineering) is all about being reasonable; I.E. not focusing on precision to the nth decimal point.

      Beleive it or not, it is still possible to build very complicated things (except computers themselves) without the aid of computers.

      However, this takes highly-skilled professionals working as a team, and they work together

  • Train to Catch Space Probe (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 30, 2004 @01:05PM (#9020155)
    The hardest part of this is building the track REALLY FAST when you find out where the probe is going to land, so you can make sure that the train is there to catch it.
  • we have uh-oh.

  • Happy Hooker (Score:3, Informative)

    by J_Omega ( 709711 ) on Saturday May 01, 2004 @05:52AM (#9026619)
    NASA has used an airplane to snag sounding rocket payloads on descent for years. Affectionately named the "Happy Hooker" because that's just what it did, latched a big hook onto the parachute.

    As part of a university program that launched a joint venture sounding rocket from Wallops Island, this wasn't an available option for us. We constructed the payload to be watertight and boyant, and hired a tuna-boat to go out and pick the thing out of the Atlantic.

    *cheers* to all SPIRIT teammates if they happen to read this. It was an outstanding success.


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