Ballute
Encyclopedia
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was founded in 1898 by Frank Seiberling. Goodyear manufactures tires for automobiles, commercial trucks, light trucks, SUVs, race cars, airplanes, farm equipment and heavy earth-mover machinery....
in 1958. It is a parachute braking device that is optimized for use at high altitudes and high supersonic
Supersonic
Supersonic speed is a rate of travel of an object that exceeds the speed of sound . For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C this speed is approximately 343 m/s, 1,125 ft/s, 768 mph or 1,235 km/h. Speeds greater than five times the speed of sound are often...
velocities. The original ballute was a cone-shaped balloon with a toroid
Toroid
Toroid may refer to*Toroid , a doughnut-like solid whose surface is a torus.*Toroidal inductors and transformers which have wire windings on circular ring shaped magnetic cores.*Vortex ring, a toroidal flow in fluid mechanics....
al burble fence fitted around its widest point. The burble fence is an inflated toroidal structure on a ballute intended to ensure flow separation. This stablizes the ballute as it deccelerates through different flow regimes (from supersonic to subsonic).
The ballute is either inflated by a gas generator, or by air forced into the structure by ram air inlets.
Ballutes have also been proposed in toroidal form.
Applications
The ballute has been used as a retarding device for freefall bombsGravity bomb
An unguided bomb, also known as a free-fall bomb, gravity bomb, dumb bomb, or iron bomb, is a conventional aircraft-delivered bomb that does not contain a guidance system and hence, simply follows a ballistic trajectory....
dropped from aircraft. It was used as part of the escape equipment for the Gemini
Project Gemini
Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program of NASA, the civilian space agency of the United States government. Project Gemini was conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, with ten manned flights occurring in 1965 and 1966....
spacecraft. It has been proposed for use during aerocapture
Aerocapture
Aerocapture is a technique used to reduce velocity of a spacecraft, arriving at a celestial body with a hyperbolic trajectory, in order to bring it in an orbit with an eccentricity of less than 1. It uses the drag created by the atmosphere of the celestial body to decelerate. Only one pass in the...
and aerobraking
Aerobraking
Aerobraking is a spaceflight maneuver that reduces the high point of an elliptical orbit by flying the vehicle through the atmosphere at the low point of the orbit . The resulting drag slows the spacecraft...
.
Fictional references
Ballutes are seen in the film 2010. They are used by the spaceship Alexei Leonov for an aerobrakingAerobraking
Aerobraking is a spaceflight maneuver that reduces the high point of an elliptical orbit by flying the vehicle through the atmosphere at the low point of the orbit . The resulting drag slows the spacecraft...
manoeuvre around the planet Jupiter to enter orbit about the moon Io.
In the animated Gundam
Gundam
The is a metaseries of anime created by Sunrise studios that features giant robots called "Mobile Suits" ; usually the protagonist's MS will carry the name Gundam....
series, ballutes are used for ships or mobile suits to re-enter Earth's atmosphere.
External links
- http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/bulletin/bullet103/marraffa103.pdf
- http://www.parachutehistory.com/other/ballute.html
- Andrews SpaceAndrews SpaceAndrews Space is a small aerospace company based in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1999 to develop space systems. Andrews provides aerospace services for commercial, civil, and military clients.-Current projects:...
Ballute Rentry Technology and simulation video