MGB: Having trouble re-doing Apollo

http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/wmv/etouchsyst2.download.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/Constellation/CDT2_256.asx

Not sure if you will be able to access this video or not, but a recent test of the parachutes for the new space capsule failed miserably.

The dummy capsule was fairly unsteady as well.

Ouch. Talk about touchdown. I hope they are still planning on a water landing in the end' not that it would have been any better in this case.

Man, that would give an astronaut a headache! Maybe we should contract that part out to the Ruskies. they've been doing that successfully for fifty years.

Yes and no Jack. They have had some serious malfunctions on recent trips back from the space station....with our guys on board! Two times in a row, they made VERY harrowing ballistic re-entries (way too steep), and almost got cooked. The g-forces would have killed them first.

Chute kinda opened after it hit the ground.

mmmm I know this is dumb question, but dont we use the shuttle? This is a trip back in time.

cstrong45 Wrote:

progun Wrote:

Manned space-flight is so 1960s. Leave space to JPL and the Robots :)

I don't think so! The first Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarian, an several other Russians hit the ground like turds from tha asses of tall cows. I remember another flight of 3 cosmonauts making a big smoking hole in the ground too.

During Yuri's last flight his guidence systems failed and he flew it in manually, but the parachutes didn't open.

My 11 year old is fascinated by the space flights of the sixties, just as I was at his age. Apollo 13 is his favorite movie, and he has books and the like. When I read these books and see DVDs about the space program, what a different country we were back then. Just look at how they dressed in ties in the control center. That is just a small example, but a much different mindset back then.

Uh....we referred to that kinda situation as....HANO...High Altitude, No Opening!

You think JPL and robots are the cure? Aren't those the same folks who whiffed on the metric-English conversion just a few years ago and splattered that lander all over Mars?

And they wonder whey they discovered perclorate on Mars?

Man HAS to be in space...no other way!