"Jeff Findley" writes:

"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
...
"El Kabong" Gemini parasail landing tests, 1965


http://www.temple-telegram.com/story/2007/07/23/42334

Cool. Knowing the name of this thing allowed Google to find some other
stuff:

http://www.airzoo.org/archive/elkabong/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Zoo

Which finally led me here, high resolution pictures!

http://aesp.nasa.okstate.edu/fieldgu.../elkabong.html

Poster with some in-flight fotos:
http://aesp.nasa.okstate.edu/fieldgu...g/IMG_0525.JPG

This is a nice concept. Scale the thing up for a larger crew, add a
hatch through the heat-shield and a service/mission module (as the
russian TKS did), and you have something.

But why did they use skids? With the ability for precision landings you
can land at a runway and use wheels.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery