The_Lone_Beagle
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Weathercocking shortens the height of apogee, but more importantly you have horizontal velocity which remains fairly high throughout the flight. Any significant velocity when a parachute opens can cause problems.
Steve Shannon
Right, while the y-component of velocity may have reached zero, the x-compenent would still be quite high. Coupled with a cell phone in the payload bay, the amount of energy that the payload bay would have exerted on the shock cord/bolt & nut would have been *quite* high, since kinetic energy is mass * velocity squared. Ok, maybe not that high, since the two pieces were flying together, and the separation would make the KE velocity relative to each other.
But it still would have been quite a bit of force. If the shock cord was still attached to the lower body (not the payload section), still had some metal bits, and was nylon, could it have rubber-banded back after separation and caused the damage above the fin?