Cargo down mass?

Saw this on the news group and wondered if it might be the answer to getting
large items back.

August 17, 2009

Beth Dickey
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2087


H. Keith Henry
Langley Research Center, Va.
757-864-6120/344-7211


Keith Koehler
Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va.
757-824-1579


RELEASE: 09-188

NASA LAUNCHES NEW TECHNOLOGY: AN INFLATABLE HEAT SHIELD

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. -- A successful NASA flight test Monday
demonstrated how a spacecraft returning to Earth can use an
inflatable heat shield to slow and protect itself as it enters the
atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.

The Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment, or IRVE, was vacuum-
packed
into a 15-inch diameter payload "shroud" and launched on a small
sounding rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops
Island, Va., at 8:52 a.m. EDT. The 10-foot diameter heat shield, made
of several layers of silicone-coated industrial fabric, inflated with
nitrogen to a mushroom shape in space several minutes after liftoff.

The Black Brant 9 rocket took approximately four minutes to lift the
experiment to an altitude of 131 miles. Less than a minute later it
was released from its cover and started inflating on schedule at 124
miles up. The inflation of the shield took less than 90 seconds.

"Our inflation system, which is essentially a glorified scuba tank,
worked flawlessly and so did the flexible aeroshell," said Neil
Cheatwood, IRVE principal investigator and chief scientist for the
Hypersonics Project at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
"We're really excited today because this is the first time anyone has
successfully flown an inflatable reentry vehicle."

According to the cameras and sensors on board, the heat shield
expanded to its full size and went into a high-speed free fall. The
key focus of the research came about six and a half minutes into the
flight, at an altitude of about 50 miles, when the aeroshell
re-entered Earth's atmosphere and experienced its peak heating and
pressure measurements for a period of about 30 seconds.

An on board telemetry system captured data from instruments during
the
test and broadcast the information to engineers on the ground in real
time. The technology demonstrator splashed down and sank in the
Atlantic Ocean about 90 miles east of Virginia's Wallops Island.

"This was a small-scale demonstrator," said Mary Beth Wusk, IRVE
project manager, based at Langley. "Now that we've proven the
concept, we'd like to build more advanced aeroshells capable of
handling higher heat rates."

Inflatable heat shields hold promise for future planetary missions,
according to researchers. To land more mass on Mars at higher surface
elevations, for instance, mission planners need to maximize the drag
area of the entry system. The larger the diameter of the aeroshell,
the bigger the payload can be.

The Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment is an example of how NASA
is using its aeronautics expertise to support the development of
future spacecraft. The Fundamental Aeronautics Program within NASA's
Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in Washington funded the
flight experiment as part of its hypersonic research effort.

For images and more information about the experiment, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronauti...ures/irve.html

-end-


--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
om...
For images and more information about the experiment, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronauti...ures/irve.html

This is the sort of cutting edge research NASA should be doing every year.
Congrats to NASA on the successful test!

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. -- A successful NASA flight test Monday
demonstrated how a spacecraft returning to Earth can use an
inflatable heat shield to slow and protect itself as it enters the
atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.


Shouldn't Arthur C Clarke's family get royalties on this ? He had that
concept demonstrated in 2010 with aerobraking around jupiter :-) :-)

NASA is going to have to be a but more specific about the material used
for the balloon. If this to be of any serious use for manned flights, it
needs to sustain thousands of degrees of heat for what ? 15 minutes ?

I guess this could be of use for non-orbital launches that go high up,
and straight down (for instance, weather instruments).

John Doe wrote:


WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. -- A successful NASA flight test Monday
demonstrated how a spacecraft returning to Earth can use an
inflatable heat shield to slow and protect itself as it enters the
atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.


Shouldn't Arthur C Clarke's family get royalties on this ? He had that
concept demonstrated in 2010 with aerobraking around jupiter :-) :-)

Aerobraking as a concept in SF goes back much further than 2010...
RAH used it at least once.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Jeff Findley" wrote:


"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
. com...
For images and more information about the experiment, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronauti...ures/irve.html

This is the sort of cutting edge research NASA should be doing every year.

NASA is doing cutting edge research routinely. It just doesn't show
up here for discussion much because it's not always the big sexy
stuff.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Jeff Findley" wrote:


"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
.com...
For images and more information about the experiment, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronauti...ures/irve.html

This is the sort of cutting edge research NASA should be doing every year.

NASA is doing cutting edge research routinely. It just doesn't show
up here for discussion much because it's not always the big sexy
stuff.

That and they're not doing anything very big anymore. Most of the money
gets eaten up by the manned spaceflight budget. NASA has yet to fly a
liquid fueled axial or linear aerospike engine on a flight profile similar
to a launch vehicle's first stage (which is where you'd use such an engine).
The linear aerospike engines from X-33 were only tested on the ground. The
data which really needs to be gathered would be at altitude (from sea level
to vacuum).

The best I've seen so far is sounding rocket data which used a solid stage
and compared a conventional nozzle to an axial aerospike nozzle.
Unfortunately, the data wasn't very good (likely due to erosion of the
nozzles by the solid exhaust), so no real conclusions could be made.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon