Gemini capsule recovery with paraglider wing?

Well, at least it had an easy to service nose gear, and no prop strike risk if it collapsed. :D
 
gemini_rogallo.jpg


220px-Gemini_paraglider.JPG

Ron Wanttaja
 
I think paragliders are those goofy looking parachute thingys.

I felt OK with the risk of hang gliding. There's no way I would fly one of those things, they can collapse in a thermal, and tossing the reserve may or may not be successful with all the spinning Dacron already above the pilot.
 
Because Samuel Langley was Secretary of the Smithsonian and had a feud with Wilbur and Orville over his "Aerodrome A" debacle. Ah, politics.
And, if I remember correctly, the Smithsonian only got the Wright Flyer to display once the organization agreed that they would officially recognize the Flyer as the first aircraft. Before that, Orville had lent it to a museum in England. Didn't go to the Smithsonian until 1948.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Apparently contrived by the inventors. That’s why I’m confused.

I forgot my early 60’s history, thanks Salty for pointing it out. Hang gliding and paragliding is a bit like skiing and snowboarding, each kind of a child of the other and each now overtaking its “parents” in popularity. In the early days, rogallo wing and hang glider were interchangeable terms and Francis Rogallo is referred to as the father of hang gliding.

Guess it was a bit too much inside baseball.
 
For those of you who'd enjoy it millennial-splained to you...


Actually this is a pretty good YouTube channel and she covers some interesting topics from the heyday of space exploration.
 
As a Hang Glider pilot, I can’t describe how painful it is to have a Rogallo wing called a paraglider. :).

Well, a paraglider has much better performance than an old standard Rogallo...

I think paragliders are those goofy looking parachute thingys.

I felt OK with the risk of hang gliding. There's no way I would fly one of those things, they can collapse in a thermal, and tossing the reserve may or may not be successful with all the spinning Dacron already above the pilot.

Yet I believe the safety record of paragliders is somewhat better than rigid hang gliders. But they are more weather limited than a rigid.
 
Apparently contrived by the inventors. That’s why I’m confused.
According to Wikipedia (I acknowledge it's not necessarily an authoritative source) it was NASA who renamed the Rogallo Wing "Parawing". Paraglider was apparently a term combining parachute and glider. The Rogallos had released their patent, US 2,546,078, to the government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Rogallo

In the original patent by the Rogallos, titled "Flexible Kite", they note: "It is interesting to note the comparison between the principle of our kite and that of the conventional parachute. Both structures hold their shapes because of air pressure on a concave surface, but a parachute does not develop lift, it develops only drag, i.e. a force in the direction of the relative wind. Our structure, on the other hand, develops lift, i.e. a force perpendicular to the relative wind due to the wing-like shape in which the kite sections are maintained by the wind and the bridle lines. Further, we believe the principle described herein may be applied to man carrying devices such as airplanes, parachutes, and gliders (emphasis mine - S.C.), and in such event stabilizing and control surfaces could be added."

It is unlikely the Rogallos would have objected to NASA renaming their invention.
 
I’m still confused.

Rogallo had been interested in the flexible wing since 1945. He and his wife built and flew kites as a hobby. They could not find official backing for the wing, including at Rogallo's employer National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), so they carried out experiments in their own time. By the end of 1948 they had two working designs using a flexible wing — a kite they called "Flexi-Kite" and a gliding parachute they later referred to as a "paraglider".

Maybe my confusion is that they were not referring to the flexible wing as a paraglider, but I misread the above as if they had.
 
pretty good YouTube channel
Yeah that's a great channel to geek out on!

PS, I've had people ask me if you can control the Cirrus chute to decide where to land. I initially thought it was a dumb question, but later did acknowledge it would be sort of cool to have that control
 
Looks like a Rogallo Wing to me. You'd think the Smithsonian would credit the inventors, Francis and Gertrude Rogallo; Francis was a NASA engineer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogallo_wing
It is. My father worked for Goodyear Aerospace at the time. I actually used to have a hand-made test article used for small-scale (5 lb. payload) drops! It was otherwise to be tossed in the trash. It never flew very well, at least with me rigging it.
I also got to watch tests of the "ballute", a balloon/parachute conglomeration, including full scale drop tests at the Ravenna Arsenal, that would have allowed ejecting F-111 pilots (which had a capsule, or would have) to float in the air until snagged by a retrieval aircraft. One failed, spectacularly. One worked perfectly. It was great to be a kid during those times (being essentially unaware of the Vietnam war ...)
 
Yeah that's a great channel to geek out on!

PS, I've had people ask me if you can control the Cirrus chute to decide where to land. I initially thought it was a dumb question, but later did acknowledge it would be sort of cool to have that control

Well, if the engine were still running and you had rudder control, could you control it? :)

And yeah, I binged watched a bunch of her episodes after going down the YouTube rabbit hole of space geek content.
 
I’m still confused.

Maybe my confusion is that they were not referring to the flexible wing as a paraglider, but I misread the above as if they had.
Admittedly, trying reconstruct the history is murky at best; I'll concede the Rogallos used the term "paraglider."
 
I have seen the word "paraglider" used in a science fiction book printed before the development of modern paragliders. Reading it at that time, I pictured a Rogallo (which did exist then).
 
According to Merriam-Webster, the first known use of the word "paraglider" was in 1944, four years before the Rogallos filed their 1948 patent application.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paraglider#h1
I wish Merriam-Webster would cite their sources- it may lead to an interesting read.

Here's what I have, so far:
Ram-air parachute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domina_Jalbert

David Barish:
https://xcmag.com/news/david-barish-the-forgotten-father-of-paragliding/
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/01barish.html
 
Well, a paraglider has much better performance than an old standard Rogallo...
Yet I believe the safety record of paragliders is somewhat better than rigid hang gliders. But they are more weather limited than a rigid.

Yes, modern, high performance paragliders are way better than the old "standards". The standards had about a 4 to 1 glide. On the safety side, it's hard to say for sure. There are almost weekly fatalities in Paragliders, but there are way more people flying them, particularly in Europe. Hang gliders have much fewer fatalities than they did in the 70's. Have had a few years with none or very few recently. Similar to GA, there's not a way to get a good denominator for hours flown. No requirement to record it. I will say, throwing your reserve when the canopy collapses is considered a non-event in a paraglider. I'd say there are maybe one or two deployments per year in hang gliding.
 
And the battle wasn't helped much by Curtiss dredging up a reworked Aerodrome A to try to invalidate some of the Wright patents. Finally, in an attempt to cool down the battle in favor of military interests the feds stepped in and set up a specific royalty agreement to the Wrights and Curtiss.

The Aerodrome A really didn't so much fly as plummet. Twice it got chucked off into the Potomac, the latter time nearly killing the pilot. It never got to the question of controllability. Langley didn't understand aerodynamics; the Wrights spent a lot of time learning that subject on their own. I now have a "Samuel P. Langley Award" for failure to achieve flight in a most spectacular manner.
 
a parachute does not develop lift, it develops only drag, i.e. a force in the direction of the relative wind.
Not anything this side of W.W. 2. If it's steerable, even a round 'chute is giving some forward movement and generating some lift. Way down on the back side of the lift curve, but it isn't pure drag.

No Nit to Small to Pick.
 
a parachute does not develop lift, it develops only drag, i.e. a force in the direction of the relative wind.
Not anything this side of W.W. 2. If it's steerable, even a round 'chute is giving some forward movement and generating some lift. Way down on the back side of the lift curve, but it isn't pure drag.

No Nit to Small to Pick.
Just to be clear, you weren't quoting me; that quote was from the Rogallos' patent.
 
It was Rogallo and I'm pretty sure he was actively involved in the project at the time. I've seen some images of Gus Grissom doing some tests with it.
 
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