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Michele

Oops...NASA Chute failed to deploy

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My girlfriend (an engineer at JPL) said the capsule was tumbling during re-entry (wasn't supposed to) and the accelerometer that fires the mortar that deploys the drogue couldn't figure out how fast it was going.

Someone has to remove that line of code that says, "don't deploy the drogue unstable."

Nick :)BASE 194

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I was actually talking to one of the packers on Monday. The canopy was made by Pioneer Aerospace. Can't remember the exact numbers he gave me, but the canopy was something in the area of 250 square feet, wingloading around 2:1. It was nylon reinforced with kevlar to prevent being ripped by the hook. It was packed, sealed up, and baked in an autoclave or something to kill anything alive on it (as if a couple years in space wouldn't do the trick :)
I think it mighta been slightly more than a $5 packjob. :P

Dave

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My girlfriend (an engineer at JPL) said the capsule was tumbling during re-entry (wasn't supposed to) and the accelerometer that fires the mortar that deploys the drogue couldn't figure out how fast it was going.

Someone has to remove that line of code that says, "don't deploy the drogue unstable."

Nick :)BASE 194



first jump course:
pull stable
pull on time
PULL!! ;)
"Hang on a sec, the young'uns are throwin' beer cans at a golf cart."
MB4252 TDS699
killing threads since 2001

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I It was packed, sealed up, and baked in an autoclave or something to kill anything alive on it (as if a couple years in space wouldn't do the trick :)



So it wasn't repacked within the last 120 days!!!:o
Well THERE'S the problem!;)
"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

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"The Genesis space capsule, which had orbited the sun for more than three years in an attempt to find clues to the origin of the solar system, crashed to Earth today after its parachute failed to deploy." :S hahahaaa!!!! OMG... that is SO funny. The press really loves using that phrase! Whether it's in skydiving or space technology. Just ONCE, I'd like to read "the parachute deployed, but became entangled [spiraled, collapsed after opening, slammed into a tree, etc.]. Not that any of these situations are funny, but when I read the fark article I had to chuckle.;)

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they think that the drouge deployed but was ripped away from the cylinder because of the "sheer velocity" and that's why it crashed.



I was watching NASA TV the whole time and that's not what I heard. One of the first on the ground reported nothing out. We'll see.

Bob

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This happened a while ago, on a Mars mission. Well it seems Nasa or someone at JPL made all the calculations in meters, BUT programmed the rover in feet. :S



You're confusing two failed Mars missions. Mars Climate Orbiter failed because it's aim point for entry interface was too low (by a factor of about three - the ratio of feet to meters). It incinerated on entry. It's sister mission, Mars Polar Lander, is believed to have failed because the sensors that detect surface touchdown were tripped when the legs were extended after the heatshield was jettisoned. It thought it was on the surface and never fired it's braking motors. Different missions, different failures.

I wouldn't be too quick to speculate or poke fun at the latest failure. Robotic atmospheric entry, descent, and landing missions are some of the most difficult to pull off.

Bob

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Hi Dave,
So Pioneer did the chute. The CEO of Pio. (If he's still there??) Steve Hinsky used to be an engineer at Irvin in CA. back when I worked there. Irvin had this MARS Mid Air Retrival System that we worked on. That was in the late 80's. MARS systems have been around for years! It's a lot of fun to put a D-bag in a steel reinforced fixture, fold in the chute and apply about 75,000 lbs. of pressure to it with a hydraulic ram!!! Pioneer and Irvin should have websites showing all their cool toys. Doing aerospace rigging ain't yo' average day at the DZ $5dollar packjob!!
SCR-2034, SCS-680

III%,
Deli-out

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Yes, many people invest years of work in these programs and when they fail it's very devastating to them. This particular failure is going to be found way upstream from the parachutes.

One problem is there isn't enough of a commitment to space exploration. NASA has all but given up on redundancy because they don't have the money. On the other hand, when you consider the success of the Rovers and Cassini missions they aren't doing too bad.

You know, I was 15 years old when I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. I thought by now we'd be so far ahead, and it makes me sad to realize we are blowing off our greatest human asset. We are natural explorers.

Instead, (I'm in the Bonfire topic) we have a moronic leadership ignoring the fact we are killing the planet, ignoring the fact millions need our help, not our bullets, and ignoring the fact that you can't let the National Deficit raise by 1.7 BILLION per day while lining their own pockets.

We have the capacity to be so much better than this . . .

Nick
BASE 194

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Yes, many people invest years of work in these programs and when they fail it's very devastating to them. This particular failure is going to be found way upstream from the parachutes.

One problem is there isn't enough of a commitment to space exploration. NASA has all but given up on redundancy because they don't have the money. On the other hand, when you consider the success of the Rovers and Cassini missions they aren't doing too bad.

You know, I was 15 years old when I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. I thought by now we'd be so far ahead, and it makes me sad to realize we are blowing off our greatest human asset. We are natural explorers.

Instead, (I'm in the Bonfire topic) we have a moronic leadership ignoring the fact we are killing the planet, ignoring the fact millions need our help, not our bullets, and ignoring the fact that you can't let the National Deficit raise by 1.7 BILLION per day while lining their own pockets.

We have the capacity to be so much better than this . . .

Nick
BASE 194



Is anybody else watching the news confrence. A few people have been working on this project since the '80s, others since the mid-'90s. It's really sad. Maybe we should send them a DZ.com sympathy card or something.

--Douva
I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

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I think some packer owes NASA $5 for that sloppy pack job.


------------------------------------------------------------

Must have been bad body position



Spoken like a true packer.:P

Anybody read Dan Brown's Deception Point? The science part might be questionable, but the economics might be very accurate.

The JPL has disabled or moved the link showing how the helo was going to snag the cannister. Poor sports.
Shit happens. And it usually happens because of physics.

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"The Genesis space capsule, which had orbited the sun for more than three years in an attempt to find clues to the origin of the solar system, crashed to Earth today after its parachute failed to deploy." :S hahahaaa!!!! OMG... that is SO funny. The press really loves using that phrase! Whether it's in skydiving or space technology. Just ONCE, I'd like to read "the parachute deployed, but became entangled [spiraled, collapsed after opening, slammed into a tree, etc.]. Not that any of these situations are funny, but when I read the fark article I had to chuckle.;)



How about: The systems that were designed to deploy the parachute seem to have failed to operate corectly. The parachute can do nothing on it's own.
I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

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Why'd they choose a RAM air?



Exactly , what was wrong with round chutes, they have been used countless times before.



They wanted it to have some forward speed to make it easier to snag with the helicopter. The sole purpose of that was to keep the material from coming in contact with the earth to prevent contamination and insure a pristine sample.

That got busted all to hell - literally.

Puts us in a pickle now - we were planning on using that capsule for another mission. Gotta do some rethinking now!

Jump
---------------
Scars remind us that the past is real

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Wouldn't there be a risk of contamination from the Earths atmossphere ?

If the capsule was air tight then surely the sample couldn't have been contaminated by earth or soil.

Or am I missing something out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you think my attitude stinks you should smell my fingers

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Wouldn't there be a risk of contamination from the Earths atmossphere ?

If the capsule was air tight then surely the sample couldn't have been contaminated by earth or soil.

Or am I missing something out.



falling gently through the atmosphere - no risk. There really wasn't a plausible way to keep the thing from breaking apart in any scheme that allowed the capsule to contact the earth - enter the parachute.

One of the things we're really interested in is the isotope signature and soil will contaminate isotopic signatures in a heart beat (soil contamination in isotope studies have provide grist for more arguments and entertainment at meetings than you can imagine). So extreme measures were taken to prevent contact with the soil - again enter the parachute.

Now if the damn thing would have just worked [:/]

----------------
Scars remind us that the past is real

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