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In NASA's bid to land increasingly heavy payloads on Mars they've had to reinvent the parachute, and helping test these new designs is the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, or LDSD. The flat disc platform is lifted by balloon from the island of Kauai in Hawaii, then spin-stabilized and launched into the upper atmosphere to re-enter and test parachutes at air pressures and other conditions most like those on Mars. The second test is scheduled for June 8, 2015, around 1:30pm EST for initial balloon lift, with rocket burn and parachute test approximately three hours later. Should be quite the video if it goes anything like the first launch did.
UPDATE1: The full 4 hour Youtube video is now available for viewing.
UPDATE2: NASA's blog site reports:
Two experimental decelerator technologies – a supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator and a supersonic parachute – were tested. The supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator deployed and inflated. The supersonic parachute also deployed; however, it did not perform as expected. Data were obtained on the performance of both innovative braking technologies, and the teams are beginning to study the data.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @04:32PM
He has useful prosperities other than putting balloons in the air. It cannot be recovered from water like H or O. Must be found in pockets in the earth. He once released, cannot be recaptured like C. C recovery is time consuming to grow plants and bury them.
It is even considered military asset, since as can be use a corollary to air to test shock waves. He speed of sound is twice that of air, so a smaller chemical explosion can be use duplicated an atomic shock wave.
Why not use H? Though still a net loss, we have a lot of H that covers 2/3 of planet, and we can use the O as well. Yes, there is fire danger, but the balloon is disposable. You could even recover apart of the H by setting the balloon on fire! Remember Chem lab in high school?
Or why not follow the X-craft and drop from a plane?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a4046/why-is-there-a-helium-shortage-10031229/ [popularmechanics.com]
http://www.decodedscience.com/helium-shortage-situation-update-one-year-later/42314 [decodedscience.com]
http://fox17online.com/2014/02/11/helium-shortage-goes-way-beyond-birthday-balloons/ [fox17online.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @04:57PM
Helium production is a by-product of natural gas processing. You don't need to find buried pockets of helium in the ground to tap.
Hydrogen is classified as a hazardous material by OSHA, which adds all sorts of administrative and financial burdens for an experiment.
This kind of R&D is exactly what the Federal hydrogen reserve is meant for.
You want to tow something from a supersonic plane and you think that would be an easy test to design and execute???
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:40PM
Actually not a by-product. Gas was in ground with the other gas. Many He fields are in Texas. It is being drawn to surface with other gases.
The question is do you think all that He is being saved, to is it being released like natural gas at oil wells are flare off instead for being shipped?
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:46PM
Compared to all the helium used in child's balloons one research balloon is a drop in the bucket.
We're only recently starting to do helium recovery of the gas when large liquid helium cooled NMR magnets quench. (I work in a chemistry department with large superconducting NMR magnets. This became a big issue a couple years ago when helium availability was about to get in dire straights due to some ill thought out legislation WRT privatizing the US helium reserve.)