back to article Orbital skydives to follow inflatable heatshield success?

NASA has announced a successful live test of a prototype inflatable heat shield for re-entry to a planet's atmosphere. The blow-up shield could have important implications for future missions to Mars - and also, perhaps, for the nascent field of orbital spacesuit skydiving. The test unit is known as the Inflatable Re- …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. The Indomitable Gall
    Headmaster

    What's the HP angle?

    That's "Harry Potter" not "Hewlett Packaging^H^H^H^Hrd".

    You know, broomsticks, quidditch, cloaks...?

  2. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Pint

    silicone to provide gastightness

    Am I the only one who read that as 'to provide ghastliness'?

    Obviously I'm in need of beer...

  3. Anonymous John
    Thumb Up

    What about the Paris project?

    Perhaps Vulture 2 could have one. I hope El Reg doesn't axe the program after Vulture 1.

  4. Tony Rayner
    Alien

    Starship Troopers (Off Topic)

    The armoured suits/marauders made it into the 3rd film, its was slighlty better than the 2nd but not as good as the original or the "Roughnecks" CGI series

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    and I quote

    "I'M A BOMB, I'M A BOMB, I'M A 30 SECOND BOMB; 29,28,27,26...."

    (Perhaps the person reading this before allowing it to be published could also sort out the HP/Harry Potter comments that have accidentally been included above)

    Grenade, natch!!

  6. Goatan
    Pint

    Human soup!

    Surely the G force on the spinning (in the video at least) would liquidate any meatbag foolish enough to attemp this.

    However once they solve this problem I'd like to know where you can go to sign up for this space swan dive experience.

  7. Steve the Cynic

    Not as good as a 1960 corvette

    As reentry vehicles go, the '60 Corvette at the beginning of _Heavy Metal_ (the 1981 film, duh) is hard to beat...

  8. Bod

    It's skydiving Jim, but not as we know it

    Of course Trekkies know about orbital skydives (both in the "normal" timeline, albeit in a cut scene in Generations and in the "alternate" timeline) ;)

  9. Graham Bartlett
    Pint

    So...

    The inflatable bladder held up OK. Now how's about the bladder for the guys riding on it? I bet one or two of them are going to widdle themselves, coming down at umpty-tum hundred degrees at umpty-tum hundred miles an hour.

    Still, it's a fine solution to the old "bail-out-of-the-Space-Shuttle" problem. So if your Shuttle gets a knackered wing on launch now, you can park it at the ISS and come back on your own little pod. Then the next Shuttle can bring up a repair kit.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    You know...

    ...when I saw, 'Orbital skydives to follow inflatable heatshield success?', I immediately thought that Phil and Paul Hartnoll were going to jump out of an airplane to celebrate their making an inflatable heatshield.

    Imagine my disappointment.

  11. Paul 129
    Thumb Up

    I like the video

    Well how it ends anyway... Has that feeling of the fly and windscreen joke.

  12. Parax
    Boffin

    Science

    all well and good testing the shield alone... but..with the added momentum of a payload behind it wont it have far greater extremes to survive??

  13. This post has been deleted by its author

  14. Evil Auditor Silver badge

    @Graham Bartlett Re widdle

    By the time they are down they'll be tumble-dryed anyway.

    EA

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like