Has anyone thought about a steerable drogue chute?
Coming down from 20k feet a 4-axis controller — with a similar technology as 4-axis rocket canard rotation and vertical controller — could control the four shroud lines of a drogue chute as it descends at say, 70fps from 10k to the 1k main chute deployment.
Instead of coming down 3 miles away, 100 yards would make recovery much easier and observable by the spectators.
Some years ago Apogee Components had shown a video of a steerable main chute for small rocket but I never saw this come to market as an actual product.
But what I’m envisioning is a drogue for a 4” rocket that would deploy at much higher altitudes and come down faster.
If someone has already found the show-stopping impediments that keep something like this from working, it would be a useful discussion to have.
Coming down from 20k feet a 4-axis controller — with a similar technology as 4-axis rocket canard rotation and vertical controller — could control the four shroud lines of a drogue chute as it descends at say, 70fps from 10k to the 1k main chute deployment.
Instead of coming down 3 miles away, 100 yards would make recovery much easier and observable by the spectators.
Some years ago Apogee Components had shown a video of a steerable main chute for small rocket but I never saw this come to market as an actual product.
But what I’m envisioning is a drogue for a 4” rocket that would deploy at much higher altitudes and come down faster.
If someone has already found the show-stopping impediments that keep something like this from working, it would be a useful discussion to have.