6" Mylar parachute for Mercury Redstone Capsule

[rocket trike]

We had someone suggest that we look at adding a 6" Mylar parachute for the Mercury Redstone Capsule. It was said that the Estes parachute is to large for this capsule. We are looking at adding them to our line of products. We will be selling them for $1.50 each or 3 for $3.75. I was checking here to see if there would be any interest in these parachutes beafore I add them to our line of products and make up some stock of them. Please let me know if anyone would want these parachutes.

Thank you
Tom

 

[Fore Check]

Well, take my opinion for what it's worth, but...

...I'd be very interested to see a table or calculation or graph comparing the drag coefficient of parachutes of diminishing size (of the 6 sided variety) compared to streamers of optimum length of increasing width to see where the "break over" point is where the streamer has a higher drag coefficient than the parachute.


Let me color that question a bit.

My experience with mylar parachutes is unfavorable, or "poor", at *best*. I've never had a mylar parachute perform properly in 10 launches (i've counted, documented, and made sure that I had everything else the same compared to poly and ripstop.)

Personally, I'll *never* fly with another mylar chute again unless it's someone else's rocket (no offense, there are plenty of folks who sell mylar chutes. My bad experiences were with someone else's, but I can't imagine there being much difference.)

Which is why I ask the question: Why bother with such a small chute that you must expect to unroll, open, and inflate if you can possibly acheive the same drag coefficient with a streamer of nearly infinite more reliability of deploying properly?

 

[rocket trike]

Fore Check thank you for your thought on this.

This is why I am asking as I said there was a customer that said that he felt there would be some interest in these parachutes.

We did alot of testing myself and a freind here with our Mylar parachutes before we released these parachutes. We never had problems with them at all. In fact we had more problems with the Estes chutes and rip stop fitting into the smaller body tubes. We have sold alot of these parachutes and have not heard a bad thing about them. We use a thin Mylar and med weight Kevlar for the shroud line. I know of a few people here that use our parachutes.

We are not shotting anyone down for their thoughts of the products they prefer. We know that there are going to be people who prefer to other parachutes for one reason or another.

Thank you

 

[johnnwwa]

My 2 cents worth on Mylar Chutes.
I have used Tom's chutes on just 3 flights Two flights Estes Blue Ninga, and one w/ estes #2 Skywriter all three flights were perfect.
I used dog barf & one sheet of estes wadding on top of d.b. to protect shock cord and chutes.

But I think the question is weather or not we would use a 6-8 sided 6" mylar chute to recover the Mercury Capsule. I'm not sure exactly how much the capsule weights but I can find out tomorrow. This will have a bearing on what the proper size of the chute should be. I know from what I have read here on a different threads the chute supplied w/ the kit is way to big and folks do not care for the purple and orange mix.
Just My thoughts...

John
BAR

 

[johnnwwa]

I weighed the Mercury Capsule today on a postal scale came
you at 9/10 oz. so If anybody has rocsims how about figuring out the correct parachute size if this is possible .
looking at 6" right now.

BAR
John

 

[Donaldsrockets]

I personally think it's a good idea as the Mercury capsule is prone to drifting on the provided chute. I'd be willing to try it and if the 6 inch was too small, maybe Tom would make an 8 inch now that he's into custom chute making.

Keep up the great work Tom and when you release the Lightning Strike, could you put one aside for me, now that I've been bitten by the cluster bug