"El Kabong" Gemini parasail landing tests, 1965

"El Kabong" Gemini parasail landing tests, 1965


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

"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

You've gotta love the Field Guide to American Spacecraft.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

"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

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

Well, that confirms the Quick Draw McGraw connection.

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.


I assume they were concerned about winds making it drift off course
during approach.
They thought skids would be more forgiving on a landing on the desert at
Edwards.
There is also the problem of the tires getting hot during reentry and
exploding.
Dyna-Soar was also going to use skids, as was the Soviet Spiral space
fighter.

Pat

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:15:30 +0200, Jochem Huhmann
wrote:

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

....Wheels usually require tires, and tires generally require inner
tubes or a pressurized gas holding the walls rigid, and at that time
there were questions about vacuum storage and temperature issues that
made tires something that had to wait. And besides, skids folded
flatter, took up less weight, and above all else didn't blow out on
impact.

OM
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] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
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OM writes:

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:15:30 +0200, Jochem Huhmann
wrote:

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

...Wheels usually require tires, and tires generally require inner
tubes or a pressurized gas holding the walls rigid, and at that time
there were questions about vacuum storage and temperature issues that
made tires something that had to wait. And besides, skids folded
flatter, took up less weight, and above all else didn't blow out on
impact.

OK, I certainly can see that all this is significant with such a
small craft as Gemini was.

But it's funny, everytime I look at Gemini I think that it was a capsule
with great potential, both Apollo and the Shuttle look somewhat
fundamentally wrong and clumsy compared to it. I can perfectly imagine a
Gemini about the size of the Shuttle crew compartment sailing down,
deploying its landing gear and touching down at a runway...



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

"Jochem Huhmann" wrote in message
...
But it's funny, everytime I look at Gemini I think that it was a capsule
with great potential, both Apollo and the Shuttle look somewhat
fundamentally wrong and clumsy compared to it. I can perfectly imagine a
Gemini about the size of the Shuttle crew compartment sailing down,
deploying its landing gear and touching down at a runway...

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/bigemini.htm

From above, Big Gemini would have used the same sort of skid landing system
being discussed here. The advanced concept was to have held 12 astronauts.

The above could have been to service a big (Saturn V launched) space station
whose diameter was the same as the first and second stages (i.e.
considerably bigger than Skylab).

Of course, all these studies were for naught since NASA's funding was
drastically cut once Apollo/Saturn development was largely complete. There
was great support for beating the Soviets to the moon, to show our technical
and economic superiority, but there was little support for manned space
travel beyond that.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

After it, uh..., landed the first time, I recall Gus Grissom being quoted as
saying, and you really need to put Gus's voice against this quote, "They
want us to land in that thing?"



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Jim Oberg wrote:
"El Kabong" Gemini parasail landing tests, 1965


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


As far as the name goes, check up on the cartoons of the era:
http://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/detailed.cgi?film=9597
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Draw_McGraw
I assume the idea came about as Gemini swinging down out of the sky like
Quick Draw McGraw on his rope, with the parawing serving the part of the
cape., and the black Gemini and it's windows looking like his masked face.
If you think that concept looked iffy, try this on for size:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/winemini.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/gallery/cwiemini.htm
Great aerodynamics! :-D
I always thought ASSET was probably a test vehicle for a aerodynamic
MARV warhead.
The concept of a quick-launch manned recoverable spacecraft seemed to be
on a lot of people's minds back then (This concept, Space Cruiser, SAINT II)
I wonder if the mission was to disable Soviet orbiting nuclear weapons
platforms in a covert way.

Pat

Pat

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:25:03 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

I assume the idea came about as Gemini swinging down out of the sky like
Quick Draw McGraw on his rope, with the parawing serving the part of the
cape., and the black Gemini and it's windows looking like his masked face.

....From what I recall, that was part of the inspiration. The other one
was the sound the boilerplate made when you hit it - a "kabong!"
sound.

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[