@honk4RC: This is designed as a reentry vehicle, so it would be coming from a much higher altitude and at a much greater speed before the chute deploys.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

@qbrad: Since when is Polish a race?

jswilson64

Someone needs to edit in a NASA engineer with a tiny umbrella. . .

jswilson64

Definitive proof that the engineers at NASA are rocket scientists and not sky divers.

(Either that, or the sky divers did not live long into their employment.)

Monty

Well that's why its a test.

vgart

@Noobs-R-Us: AS I recall you've given people shit for the "race card" Maybe you could try being a little more sensitive toward the Poles. Lots of Polish Nobel prize winners. They didn't win 'em because of supposed stupid inventions. ie: solar-powered flashlight, submarine screen door, and of course the old salt - Impact opening parachute.

qbrad

"Deploy the positioning chute" ... Fail
"Deploy the main chute" ... Fail
"Deploy the back-up chute" ... Fail
"WTF, we're all outta chutes"
"shoot!

stonefry

@kerplubber: You're right, it took almost 20 seconds for the parachute to land after the capsule had already made its impact. At least part of it made a safe landing.

LoganAdams

curious what type of camera they used that they could follow this thing as it dropped and film uninterrupted from 25k feet to ground.

Geisrud

I hope the real thing will have ejection seats.

reddingofish

at least it opened briefly after touch down ... not a complete failure!

ratheen

Great! the chute finally opened when the craft hit the ground. What is that? A Polish parachute?

Noobs-R-Us

I really enjoyed how the last chute gently floated down to the ground after the capsule went splat!

kerplubber

I think by the time the two parachutes (that broke off) were deployed the speed of the flying saucer was much higher than the speed the parachutes would normally be expected to operate at.
Anyways that is one expensive video ...

honk4RC

New meaning to the term Vomit-Comet? I was soooo hoping that the chute would open. Oh please oh please oh please!! Damnit! I don't understand how they can't get this right, right away. We already did this without computers!! Aren't there notes or logbooks left over from the first trials of these tests?!

qbrad

All it needed was one final chute to burst out of another canister in perfect formation.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

Note to self: Never buy NASA-surplus parachutes.

LoganAdams

Was that a joke? Luckily we're not in China or those engineers who designed it will be taken to the back of the NASA building and shot.

Noobs-R-Us

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ....... (breath) Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !@#$@%^ (splat)

keepr

Splat!

Just add some memory foam all around and call it good.

whatnot22

That didn't look pillow-soft to me.

bms

@chefsami: I enjoyed that as well. That chute has a great sense of comic timing.

m4ximusprim3

puts a whole new meaning to why astronauts wear diapers.

chefsami

More evidence why NASA employees can't hack it in the private sector.

bobdobbs

Best part is when the two chutes just fly right out of the thing. And i didnt think it would be so hard for NASA to build a freakin parachute tbh. Dont we already have those? And arent they already proven to work? What's the difference here?

bobojuice

A vehicle that is impervious to parachutes? Surely this has a national defense application.

dylanwho

@Serolf Divad: That image took the comment right out of my head.

Maksimir

Apparently, someone didn't say The Astronaut's Prayer before that flight.

theotherstevejobs

That was just a weather balloon!

I mean...swamp gas!

strider_mt2k

Serolf Divad

i like how it jettisoned the extra chutes..."don't need these, buh bye!"

UofITom

wow, not a single parachute worked.

ice2032

@J0hnP: That could definately be the next "Giz Explains" segment.

Simpsons-Movie-ruled

EPIC FAIL

Enisity

Don't buy your parachutes from Morton-Thiokol...

russdanger

NOOOO! BUSTER! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!?!

Con Seannery

I like how the second chute only fully opened after the capsule went splat.

chefsami

Whew...spectacular failure is right. I wonder why the bigger chutes failed to get enough air under 'em (twice)? Were the smaller chutes somehow preventing that from happening, or what? It'd be fun to analyze that data!

J0hnP

Id hate to be the monkey in that capsule.

parliamentpoet

It did slow down a bit.
Seemingly.

downbythetracks

After impact, the camera zooms in, and around 00:08 something in the foreground (slightly to the right of the billowing cloud of dirt and capsule vapor) appears. It looks like a white hourglass shape, *just* like the markings on the plummeting capsule.

So ... is this the remnants of another failed attempt?

mrburglar

@Geisrud: The camera was being held in the other falling UFO.

You REALLY don't want to see the results of that one...

Chromeo

@Enisity: damn, u beat me too it. i never get to say that.

lldsandsll

The approved backup system for chute failure is to jump as high as you can in the capsule just before impact. Everything will cancel out!

BeowulfRex

Perfect. Slap a Motorola logo on it and she's ready to go.

mildretard

@Sean Robertson: In all fairness, I recall that they did warn NASA that the part couldn't be trusted at low ambient temperatures, and the NASA hierarchy dropped the ball and lit the thing up anyway. But "Don't let NASA beaurocrats rig your parachute-lines." hadn't occurred to me...

russdanger

H
O
U
S
T
O
N

W
E

H
A
V
E

A

P
R
O
B
L
E
M
!
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*

j12997967

i want to see post impact photos!

venomous_duck41

@jswilson64: Since when is anything a "Race"?

russdanger

@russdanger: Amen. I wonder how many people still remember them from the infamous O-ring failure.

Sean Robertson

lmao... wow.. im sure after every chute they went damn, well that didnt work.. damn, then another damn, lol.. i can picture it now...the last one they go oh what the fuck!

kllngtme

At least they were consistent

Kuato

I like how NASA cant rig up a parachute, very confidence inspiring!

pradster

there goes 2million dollars coulda just gave it to me.

lilaliendog

@reddingofish: Why? So you can eject and have your own private viewing of parachute failure? These don't work eitherrrrrrrrrrr!

I think it would have been better if the parachute container opened and silverware came spewing out.

DustyButt

Hi-res photo of the capsule after landing:

[www.nasa.gov]

From TFA:
[www.nasa.gov]

waltercrm

can we please just fund nasa or shut it down entirely. all these failures these last few years, just aren't very inspiring or heartwarming.

'some pieces fell off? it'll be fine'
'convert to/from metric? why bother'

seriously, what the hell.

zamafir

did Leica survive?

malvones

What! No explosion?

SaturnV

@russdanger: I guess it was a race to the ground, UFO vs Camera. SPLAT

qbrad

Since I am not impressed by this Crappolo program, this failure makes me happy.
I hope Obama cancels the whole shabang and gives the money to Burt Rutan.

helldiver

Snippet of a response from the engineering team...which makes things seem far less bad than you might otherwise infer:

"All but one of the 18 parachutes inflated (10 to get the mockup in the proper position; eight on the mockup). The parachutes that extract the mockup from the vehicle inflated and performed correctly. The pyrotechnics that separate the mockup from the pallet it sits on inside the plane successfully fired. However, the programmer chute that gets the mockup facing the correct direction and slows it down to the correct speed did not inflate when it was deployed. The engineering team will be looking into why that is.

All the parachutes that are actually part of the parachute assembly system continued to deploy and inflate as planned. There are three types of parachutes in the parachute assembly system: drogues that are designed to stabilize the spacecraft; pilots which pull out the main parachutes; and mains, which are the large parachutes that actually lower the spacecraft to the ground. However, because the programmer chute did not inflate and slow down the vehicle and get it turned in the correct direction, the vehicle was going much faster than it would normally have been, and those parachutes were exposed to much heavier loads.

The two drogue parachutes deployed and inflated as planned, however because they were experiencing increased loads, they separated from the mockup almost immediately. The three pilot parachutes then pulled out the three main parachutes successfully, however, two of the main parachutes also separated from the mockup - again because they were experiencing loads they weren't designed to handle. Those two probably slowed the vehicle down enough that the third main parachute was able to stay attached until the vehicle reached the ground. The test vehicle did flip end over end during its descent.

The hardware was damaged, but some parts of it may be reusable.

NASA does not plan on issuing a formal statement -- this was a test of a system and it has not yet been declared a "mishap."

Summary: the positioning chute (that gets the capsule into the proper attituide and speenever got the capsule slowed down enough or in the correct attitude so all other chutes experienced load that exceeded their design tolerances. The did deploy, but failed dur to excessive capsule velocity.

scuba_steve_1

@jswilson64: I stand corrected, but seriously, not a forum for bigotry of any sort. Nationalism, racism, religionism, etc.

qbrad

@dylanwho: rotf, best comment yet "A vehicle that is impervious to parachutes?"

@LoganAdams: nothing wrong with buying surplus NASA chutes, only used once and never opened? thats like NiB.

@russdanger: "race" human race right? because i hate it when those dammn dirty apes pick on my species genus etc

tegronin

.
.
>snap<
.
.
Oh snap!

Windhawk

Boom!

Y2KGTP

I sure hope the real Orion capsule doesn't tumble like that. If it does I sure as hell would hate to be the person that has to clean that thing up.

One other thought you would think that someone in NASA would come up with a better idea than the one we used back in the 60s.

Froggmann

@Gervy: If by "dead as the high-five" you mean that everyone still does it every day, then yes.

bilups

Oh man, are we reverting back to Apollo-type pods again? This makes the Space Shuttle look sophisticated. I thought we were supposed to improve things as time went on.

bilups

@Enisity:

Is it me, or should "Epic Fail" be as dead as the hihg-five at this point?

Gervy

@helldiver: yeah
cause he'd do better......

i seem to remember his big "win" was in an aircraft that mere hours after takeoff had to have emergency maneuvers to separate wingtips from wings before they punctured the flimsy skin of the wing and thus created a huge fuel leak.

the hope and pray was that they broke off close enough to the edge of the wing to not impact the fuel storage.

Luck played a huge part in it.

mikeg916

so seriously... if you start "ride of the valkyries" and this video at the same time it's wonderfully helarious! no really i promise

BigViper

i don't know what the big deal is. Every time this happend when I was watching tv growing up one would just step out at the last possible second before it hit the ground and be fine.... sheesh

and oh yea this would have been twice as entertaining with flight of the valkyries were playing in back ground.

BigViper

Heheehh, anyone remembers the British capsule which plummeted to its death because some "engineer" didn't know how to convert from Imperial (what a joke name, imperial PITA) to Metric measures. I am continually astonished on daily basis (moved to USA from an educated part of the planet) just how "imperially dumb" the inch/pound/fahrenheit/cromagnon system is.

tabaks

@qbrad: Yes, you're right. Sorry to the Poles!

Noobs-R-Us

Ouch. They'd be better off using a MOOSE

Seriously, I'm surprised MOOSEing never caught on with extreme sports types.

Gopherit

Actually, it was clear that the capsule mockup entered an un-compensated lateral flutter which in turn prevented inflation of the slowdown parachute. Then, the rest was the domino effect. Interesting, though, to see how the only remaining main parachute was going too fast to allow the inflation. Not that it would have helped, it probably would have just been ripped off.

tabaks

hahahahaha just like soyuz one, except without the poor soviets inside.
[en.wikipedia.org]

oilcanboyd

I LOVE people who know nothing about the complexities of this are criticizing it. Yes, it failed. New stuff fails and you test it to see how to fix it and perfect it. It looks like it wasn't situated properly leaving the plane so the actually decent parachutes weren't tested in a situation that would actually be happening to them where this actually re-entering the atmosphere.

NASA has also had some wonderful successes. Their Mars program has been very successful. Please give them a little credit. You don't know anything about what they're dealing with here and neither do I.

MBsam

They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one. If that's the case, the parachute came out just fine.

There's actually a solution to this problem (from my armchair engineering position). Zero/zero ejection seats (capable of safely ejecting the occupant from zero altitude and zero airspeed) have parachutes whose riser cords are connected at the 'chute by small explosive charges, either 14 for the 28 risers, or 28 charges, I can't remember which.

When the big bang handle is pulled and the seat goes out, the parachute is forced open to catch air by the explosive charges.

There may be a good reason this technique wasn't used, but it works for falling humans.

MyPetFly

Won't matter. The rocket-powered pogo stick will kill everyone on the way up.

PastorDoodah

@oilcanboyd: hahahaha when does one Cosmonaut = Soviets (plural) ??

jswilson64

@scuba_steve_1: So what they're saying is "Everything will be fine as long as nothing goes wrong with re-entry."

WMyers

Glad I'm not an astronaut
This looks like it could be next ride at the stratosphere in vegas

crash1105

Hey, I'm not a Genius Bar staffer or anything, but it doesn't look like it was supposed to do that. Perhaps they should consider using parachutes that open.

Great video though.

misterwho

@aec007: With your comments of putting an old design back into production.

This is not possible, there is a fraction of the budget available to NASA as opposed to what they had during the Apollo missions. This time around its all about one thing, efficiency.

dorylomorphs

Note to NASA:

Apollo chutes worked every time. Dig in the archives for some info... oversize them and you are good to go.
_______________________________________________________

@MBsam:
Yes, it's very complex... granted. But they are trying to re-invent the wheel.
We are losing the Shuttle in 2010, going back to old designs of the 60's multi-stage rockets and the "new" breed of engineers cannot even copy an old design right.

If they were to take the old Apollo design and put it in production today. It would fly sooner and before the Orion can get up from the launching platform.

We made it to the MOON for Christ sake !... and on what can be considered today primitive hardware. They did not have carbon fiber, 8 axis CNC machines and more computing power in the palm of you hand than we have today.

Where the hell is the single-stage-to-orbit spaceship? Huh?

Nowhere.

It's all due to lack of leadership, vision and respect for old traditional designs that have worked and the "ones" that made it work.

In the US is very common to just retire old employees rather than let them stay and mentor new engineers into the system for 5 or more years before leaving. Every kid out of college thinks that they can take on the world. Wrong.
You never stop learning.
Well, I think in NASA's case they did...long time ago.

Harsh, but a reality.

aec007

Thump.

James

I think it would have been much better if the first positioning chute hadn't failed... it looks like it caught on the edge of the mockup as it slid off the pallet. That set up an uncontrollable pendulum effect, and eventually caused the mockup to roll over the main parachute deployment.

The final effect was what parachutists call a streamer, and is almost unrecoverable (physically shaking the risers apart is only method). The only real option is to cut away to a reserve chute.

nimblesquirrel

Origin of the phrase "Awwww chute..."?

Stem_Sell

@Sean Robertson: A mission failure is different from a test during R&D.

Having things not work perfectly as you develop them is normal, not failure.

frigg

Did any of them check the parachute for expiration date?

ripfire

Come on let's all get real here. NASA is a government agency, right. So after careful Root Cause Failure analysis the overall test failure was caused by pilot error. The contract C-17 pilot was flying at an telemetered altitude of 24,963 feet and was overspeed by 4.72 mph. If it hadn't been for such gross negligence on his part the test would have been a success.

Kingteddybear

And that's why I'll never be an astronaut. Otherwise, I'd sign up.

crapcakes

NASA: Dude, I forget, how do we do this again?

bbfreak

Remember, it's not the fall that kills you. it's the sudden stop at the end.

Kodai1

@aec007:
The single-stage-to-orbit spaceship fell back to Earth before it made it out of the atmosphere. Rutan's SpaceShip One is only capable of Low Earth Orbit. The first qualifying X-Prize flight flew _lower_ then the highest two flights of the Air Force's pre-NASA space program...in a jet friggen airplane. That could take off and land under its own power. SSO wasn't even technically a single-stage-to-LEO spaceship, as it required a boost up to launch height.

Getting high enough to break free of Earth's gravity well is exponentially more difficult than getting just barely high enough to qualify for astronaut's wings.

@nimblesquirrel:
You'd think someone could design a parachute that will prevent that from happening to itself. Something that will physically force the base of the chute to open up (which is really all that you need, yes?). It's probably not something you could get away with for a backpack parachute that a skydiver would use, but for a built-in deployed chute like this, maybe something akin to a cluster of kites that deploy in a connected ring formation and tie in to both the center and points around the base of the main chute.

Purple Dave

I see everyone here is missing the point. Is this not how things were done 50 years ago. This developed into the shuttle program and where did it go from there??? right back to the 60's. Is that progress?? Are we all going to start watching 14" b/w TV's soon?? Are they bringing back the telegraph?

Cliff_Dangers

I KNOW i have seen this before.....hmmm....
Ah RIGHT!

...ACME Parachutes!!!...
..always pop open AFTER the "Landing"...

reefdweller

@aec007:
and you sir, might I add, are incorrect. I believe it was one of the later apollo that had 1 of the 3 fail, however the craft was designed for one of the those chutes to be a backup. A slightly higher fps ensued but the point is nothing should be relied upon as you said, especially older technology. And ESPECIALLY a chute!

CrashingOut

@qbrad: you forgot the self servient prick, oh wait, you invented that...

come on who thinks polaks are dumb? nobody, I've never met a polish hater, met some good polish lovers though ho ho

CrashingOut

Wow. Dude, the astronauts are dead bro.

CmdrHunt

I worked at NASA a few years ago when we were testing the X38 lifting-body reentry vehicle. It took a couple rounds of "penetration testing" (aka punching holes in the desert floor) before the parafoils got untangled.

tinyhands

@aec007: Amen. the first thing through my mind was "geez, NASA can't even copy 40-50 year old technology now?"

distortedloop

well NASA's aiming technology is good.. the capsule landed at safe distance from the camera. Maybe NASA could tie-up with Auto industry, get the disc brake technology, supersize it, and aim for hill side. then Astronaughts could use braking to slow down to stop...

oh oh and by the way the Ride to Mars did not crash .. because NASA did not use parachute landing. hint hint ;)

honk4RC

@waltercrm:

Wow I would have thought the whole thing would be stuck a few feet in the ground...

Poster99

dont see how it was a failure. i clearly see the shute fill with air at the very end...

quasimotto

i like the fact you can see the pod thinking (yes thinking... run with it) "Well that one didnt work.... nope not that one either... try again... christ most people only have one parachute i cant get 4 to work... make that five, oh fuck it. Sweet mercy earth embrace me!"

Stueymon

Difference between this and Apollo (besides 40 years) is only about a trillion dollars and the fact that Apollo worked.

The Brain

@Purple Dave: SpaceShipOne is capable of spaceflight, however it is NOT capable of orbit. Getting to LEO requires you travel about 8x faster than SSO achieved, at about twice the altitude. That's easily 200-300x the fuel. You also have to dissipate all that energy on re-entry. Orbit is amazingly more difficult than reaching space.

The best altitude for a jet (air breathing) is only 123kft. That's only about 1/3 the altitude needed for the X-Prize. The craft you thought you were talking about was rocket powered, and dropped out of a B-52 (not self-powered from takeoff).

wagnerrp

@Serolf Divad: That pretty much sums up this entire article + the comments. Kudos to you.

Duckspwn

I saw a show on tv a couple of years ago. NASA engineers were testing a parachute in their gazillion dollar wind tunnel. Their design was a piece of shit back then and they had to modify it to open. Looks like it's still a piece of shit.
Shouldn't they just hire another company to design one for them? Hmmmm

chadchadchad

The "Sanford & Son" theme should accompany that video.

ShulkaWebster

Well, the capsule beat the parachute to the ground...

...so it did "win."

U S A! U S A!!

Marco172

Looks like the first parachute got tangled on deployment, and all the other problems were a result of that failure. If I had the guess, I would say the parachute rigger(s) mispacked the first chute. Because of that failure, the capsule was falling too fast when the second set deployed, apparently correctly, and the opening forces generated by the parachutes were therefore higher than the attachments or shrouds were designed to take, so they failed immediately. The capsule was tumbling violently after that, which fouled landing parachute on deployment and never opened completely.

The Apollo program had failures at least this spectacular, but that was before YouTube. And you'd think that someone might have figured out how to get them a wee bit more reliable.

rocketgeek