Rotor Landing for NASA Capsules

[JNUK]

Anyone volunteers to model this - LINK

 

[luke strawwalker]

Something I read recently in Asif Siddiqi's "Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge"... Korolev's first idea for recovery of the Vostok-- rotors...

Of course the packaging of them, protection from reentry temperature extremes, and deployment without destroying them made parachutes look a LOT more attractive!

Later! OL JR

 

[Zeus-cat]

The other concern is that just like a helicopter you need a counter rotating force like a tail rotor. Without a tail rotor the helicopter would spin in the opposite direction of the main rotor.

 

[rrlc]

The other concern is that just like a helicopter you need a counter rotating force like a tail rotor. Without a tail rotor the helicopter would spin in the opposite direction of the main rotor.

Only under power. If its just auto-rotating, no tail rotor needed.

 

[FastCargo]

Unmanned boosters, sure.

Manned capsules...not really.

Size, complexity, failure modes all work against a rotor system. You can build some redundancy into a multi parachute system...tougher to do that with a rotor.

FC

 

[dave carver]

Only under power. If its just auto-rotating, no tail rotor needed.

There's the problem. There is nothing to prevent the capsule from rotating with the autorotation. Even hanging off of ballbearings there's still friction to deal with. I've seen videos of helicopter crashes without tailroter and autorotating spinning all the way to the ground.

 

[luke strawwalker]

The main problem is 1) stowage in the vehicle during other phases of flight and 2) successful, RELIABLE deployment! Deployment is the 900 pound gorilla in the room... how to fold up and pack rotors and then deploy them into a slipstream with the capsule falling at a couple hundred miles an hour (even with a drogue chute the speeds are considerable) with a multi-ton spacecraft hanging under them is a CONSIDERABLE CHALLENGE. Which is why you don't see it done... (or haven't yet anyway... ROTON notwithstanding).

I've seen plans for VTOL aircraft prior to Harrier that would have used a single counterweighted rotor blade for vertical takeoff and landing... there were even proposals to take an F-104 Starfighter and put a single blade counterweighted retractable rotor in a special fixture along its dorsal spine that would allow it to land vertically and take off... then convert to jet powered forward flight, stow the rotor and counterweight, and transition to supersonic flight regimes... Interesting but as for how realistic or workable... well, they never built it, so I guess confidence wasn't high...

Rotor deployment on a spacecraft would be infinitely harder due to the flight orientation and speeds and such after reentry around the time the rotors would have to deploy... and then there's the stowage issue which would be INCREDIBLY difficult on a conical space capsule...

Later! OL JR