- Joined
- Jun 4, 2010
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There are a number of challenges to designing a chute release, not the least of which is that it needs to survive an explosion without letting go, then very reliably let go when it's supposed to. And it needs to work with a wide variety of chutes and rockets.
I think as time passes, folks who sit and think about things like this will appreciate that the aspect that looked so questionable about Chute Release—that it uses common rubber bands—was actually at the heart of the aha moment that allowed its production. When I'm designing a product I go through thousands of schemes and sketches over many months, almost all of which fail on some count (complexity, cost, reliability, manufacturability). But one of the things I'm pretty good at is being able to realize when a design has broken through and satisfied all of those diverse performance objectives. For Chute Release, it was the moment that I realized a rubber band could both limit tension as well as adapt to a number of chute sizes that did it. Small thing, but there it is.
I think as time passes, folks who sit and think about things like this will appreciate that the aspect that looked so questionable about Chute Release—that it uses common rubber bands—was actually at the heart of the aha moment that allowed its production. When I'm designing a product I go through thousands of schemes and sketches over many months, almost all of which fail on some count (complexity, cost, reliability, manufacturability). But one of the things I'm pretty good at is being able to realize when a design has broken through and satisfied all of those diverse performance objectives. For Chute Release, it was the moment that I realized a rubber band could both limit tension as well as adapt to a number of chute sizes that did it. Small thing, but there it is.