Paragliding rocket return

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Blackleaf99

You can choose your behavior, not your emotions.
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Is anyone working on a controlled Paragliding style recovery mechanism to bring a rocket back to the lift off point, or at least closer to it ?

I was thinking about a GPS receiver integrated with a CPU driving a series of control servos (or other mechanism) to modify a collapsable fabric wing to autonomously bring a rocket back to where its flight began.

If someone could get that to work, it could seriously revolutionize HP rocket recovery.
 
I have been working on this with an aim to make it commercial:

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?p=1532086

Unfortunately it's been on hold for a while while I started my new company LiquidFyre Rocketry. I'm now getting ready to rebuild the parts a lost to the rocket gods with some significant upgrades. I'm also building a few stabilization bays for beta testers. Should be a fun summer.
 
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It is nice to see someone is actually working on this and making progress.

Sport Rocketry, July/August 2019, page 48, NARCON 2019 Session: GPS Guided Recovery
 
One or two ground-controlled RC Rogallo wings (fixed-spar triangular form) were done circa 40 years ago. It would be really interesting to see what people can do now with modern electronics + all that has been discovered about parafoils.
 
There is a nice Rogallo glider above a Gemini capsule in the Smithsonian at Dulles airport (Udvar-Hazy Center). It was being looked at seriously for recovery. Interestingly our tour guide there had a claim to fame. As a young 19 year old hang glider pilot many years ago he managed to have a collision, unfortunately with non other than Mr Rogallo himself. How embarrassment :oops:, and slightly ironic :).
 
I haven't watched all of it yet, but I bet this March 2019 video from Apogee covers everything we'd want to know:
 
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