From Hackaday:
The biggest issue with sending expensive electronics into near space is trying to recover them. [Lhiggs] set out to solve this issue with his Senior project for a Mechanical Engineering degree. He figured that a payload dropped from 100,000 feet should be able to glide its way back to some predefined coordinates. Here you can see one of the tests, where the payload is guiding its descent using a parafoil.
Directional control is possible with a parafoil simply by shifting weight between the two supporting ropes. In this case [Lhiggs] designed the payload to hang from a pair of servo-motor-actuated arms. Since the payload already carries altitude and position hardware (such as a GPS, electronic compass, and altimeter) it’s just a matter of waiting for the target height before separating from the weather balloon, then using the servos to navigate to the landing zone.
Unfortunately the project was never fully completed. But you can see that he got pretty far. There is test footage embedded after the break showing the device being dropped from a plane.
Comments
This was supposed to be a completely autonomous glide back but johnny law wont let me does anyone have any idea to get around this? Its a project i have been working on for years and i have way to much stuff to just give up. And as far as air densities in the upper atmosphere and the wing structures it will work in your favor to get the package out of the cold and wind and into the troposphere fast where it can regain control of itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdQHVBooerM
@ Daniel: no, that wasn't what I was talking about and that's not correct either. There is enough dynamic pressure up there for it to deploy, that is not a problem. Have a read up on the 'Added Mass effect' - Wikipedia is a good start.
@ Adrian, indeed if you cannot get it to work in the thick soup near sea level then you have larger problems.
The problem is already solved since years... Wings actually seems better than parachute.
It is just that no authoroty in the world allows for controlled recovery of radio-sonds (yet). At least on a regular basis...
One example here: http://www.gpsboomerang.com/content/view/21/34/
You are correct the thing has to be in a free fall for a bit before it deploys its parachute so that it can be traveling at a high enough speed that the little air will have any effect on the parachute. Its more complicated than it sounds. I mostly just upset that I havent done it yet
Parachute and Parafoil are two different things.A parafoil was never designed to open like a chute....problem number one. Still like the idea.
I think I might chop up my X8 to look and operate like VG space ship II
any ideas on a rocket?
I saw the acrylic rocket on hackaday
I think Elephants by parachute is an excellent concept.
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