Ballutes Studied For Hypersonic Space Vehicles

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Ballutes Studied For Hypersonic Space Vehicles
Deployment: NASA has asked for a fresh look at using inflatable ballutes for aerocapturing around Earth spacecraft from the Moon. (Image credit: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.)

GlobalAerospace has been given NASA funding to study the use of ballutes in planetaryatmospheric entry and descent, aerodynamic orbital capture, and aerodynamicgravity assist.

Ballutes (from BALLoon plus parachUTE) are basicallylarge, inflatable devices that use atmospheric drag to deceleratespacecraft; they were invented by Goodyear Aerospace in 1958.

 

Bill Christensen
Technovelgy Editor

Bill Christensen is the founder and editor of Technovelgy, a website dedicated to cataloguing  the inventions, technology and ideas of science fiction writers. Bill is a dedicated reader of science fiction with a passion about science and the history of ideas. For 10 years, he worked as writer creating technical documentation for large companies such as Ford, Unisys and Northern Telecom and currently works to found and maintain large websites. You can see Bill's latest project on Twitter.