The White-Miskill Act for Parasailing . is a law enacted by the legislature of the State of Florida in 2014 for the control of the sport of parasailing . It relates to commercial and recreational water activities prohibiting certain water activities within some areas and specifies the requirements for the operator of a vessel engaged in commercial parasailing.
112-479: The Act "Commercial parasailing" means providing or offering to provide for payment any activity involving the towing of a person by a motorboat if: (a) One or more persons are tethered to the towing vessel; (b) The person or persons ascend above the water; and (c) The person or persons remain suspended under a canopy , chute , or parasail above the water while the vessel is underway. The term does not include ultralight glider towing conducted under rules of
224-514: A Moon landing . NASA solicited feasibility study designs from several companies in 1960 and 1961, while Faget and the Space Task Group worked on their own design using a conical/blunt-body capsule (Command Module) supported by a cylindrical Service Module providing electrical power and propulsion. NASA reviewed the entrants' designs in May 1961, but when President John F. Kennedy proposed
336-686: A direct ascent mission profile. This required a single-launch vehicle much larger than the Saturn V , or else multiple Saturn V launches to assemble it in Earth orbit before sending it to the Moon. Early on, the direct ascent mission profile was replaced with lunar orbit rendezvous , augmenting the CSM with the Lunar Excursion Module (LM) to ferry two astronauts to the lunar surface. This reduced
448-420: A "British Parachute" and the "Guardian Angel" parachute. As part of an investigation into Calthrop's design, on 13 January 1917, test pilot Clive Franklyn Collett successfully jumped from a Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2c flying over Orford Ness Experimental Station at 180 metres (590 ft). He repeated the experiment several days later. Following on from Collett, balloon officer Thomas Orde-Lees , known as
560-551: A 39-bit word composed of three 13-bit "syllables". All numeric data was 26-bit two's-complement integers (sometimes used as fixed-point numbers ), either stored in the first two syllables of a word or in the accumulator . Instructions (always with a 4-bit opcode and 9 bits of operand) could go in any syllable. The Apollo spacecraft was first conceived in 1960 as a three-man craft to follow Project Mercury, to accomplish several types of mission: ferrying astronauts to an Earth-orbiting space station , circumlunar flight, or
672-505: A considerably faster forward speed than, say, a modified military canopy. And due to controllable rear-facing vents in the canopy's sides, they also have much snappier turning capabilities, though they are decidedly low-performance compared to today's ram-air rigs. From about the mid-1960s to the late-1970s, this was the most popular parachute design type for sport parachuting (prior to this period, modified military 'rounds' were generally used and after, ram-air 'squares' became common). Note that
784-408: A controlled descent to collapse on impact with the ground. Round parachutes are purely a drag device (that is, unlike the ram-air types, they provide no lift ) and are used in military, emergency and cargo applications (e.g. airdrops ). Most have large dome-shaped canopies made from a single layer of triangular cloth gores . Some skydivers call them "jellyfish 'chutes" because of the resemblance to
896-413: A convex base, which carried a heat shield (Item 2 in the diagram below) consisting of an aluminum honeycomb covered with multiple layers of fiberglass . Strapped to it was a retropack ( 1 ) consisting of three rockets deployed to brake the spacecraft during reentry. Between these were three minor rockets for separating the spacecraft from the launch vehicle at orbital insertion. The straps that held
1008-408: A cylindrical interior cabin approximately 1 meter (3.3 ft) in diameter nearly perpendicular to the capsule's longitudinal axis. The cosmonaut sat in an ejection seat with a separate parachute for escape during a launch emergency and landing during a normal flight. The capsule had its own parachute for landing on the ground. Although official sources stated that Gagarin had landed inside his capsule,
1120-471: A direct line along the centerline of an airport runway and that has a width measuring one-half mile unless otherwise permitted under federal law. The owner or operator of a vessel engaged in commercial parasailing may not offer or provide for payment any parasailing activity unless the owner or operator first obtains and maintains an insurance policy from an insurance carrier licensed in Florida or approved by
1232-422: A docking probe, with an interior volume of 5.00 cubic meters (177 cu ft). The total spacecraft mass was 6,560 kilograms (14,460 lb). Ten of these craft flew crewed after Korolev's death, from 1967 to 1971. The first ( Soyuz 1 ) and last ( Soyuz 11 ) resulted in the first in-space fatalities. Korolev had developed a 9,850-kilogram (21,720 lb) 7K-LOK variant for use in the lunar mission, but this
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#17327827762071344-400: A free-hanging man clutching a crossbar frame attached to a conical canopy. As a safety measure, four straps ran from the ends of the rods to a waist belt. Although the surface area of the parachute design appears to be too small to offer effective air resistance and the wooden base-frame is superfluous and potentially harmful, the basic concept of a working parachute is apparent. The design
1456-469: A half. You remember the tragic fire we had at the Cape. (...) Jesus, with that fire going off and that, it would have burned the suits. Everything was soaked in oxygen. So thank God. That was another thing: NASA never tested it under the conditions that they would have had if they would have had to eject. They did have some tests at China Lake where they had a simulated mock-up of Gemini capsule, but what they did
1568-483: A lower glide ratio . Space capsule A space capsule is a spacecraft designed to transport cargo, scientific experiments, and/or astronauts to and from space. Capsules are distinguished from other spacecraft by the ability to survive reentry and return a payload to the Earth's surface from orbit or sub-orbit, and are distinguished from other types of recoverable spacecraft by their blunt shape, not having wings and often containing little fuel other than what
1680-484: A lunar exploration mission. He was pressured by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to postpone development of Soyuz to work on Voskhod, and later allowed to develop Soyuz for space station and lunar exploration missions. He employed a small, lightweight bell-shaped reentry capsule, with an orbital crew module attached to its nose, containing the bulk of the mission living space. The service module would use two panels of electric solar cells for power generation, and contained
1792-408: A mass of 5,560 kilograms (12,260 lb) at launch. The Service Module was 13 feet (4.0 m) long, with a total Command/Service Module (CSM) vehicle length of 36 feet 2.5 inches (11.04 m) including the engine bell. The hypergolic propellant service propulsion engine was sized at 20,500 pounds-force (91,000 N) to lift the CSM off the lunar surface and send it back to Earth using
1904-481: A more favorable proportion to the weight of the jumper. A square wooden frame, which alters the shape of the parachute from conical to pyramidal, held open Leonardo's canopy. It is not known whether the Italian inventor was influenced by the earlier design, but he may have learned about the idea through the intensive oral communication among artist-engineers of the time . The feasibility of Leonardo's pyramidal design
2016-496: A national effort to land a man on the Moon during the 1960s, NASA decided to reject the feasibility studies and proceed with Faget's design, focused on the lunar landing mission. The contract to build Apollo was awarded to North American Aviation . The main Apollo spacecraft was built in two segments: a Command Module (CM) and a Service Module (SM). The CM was 154 inches (3.91 m) in diameter and 137 inches (3.48 m) high, with
2128-469: A number of other devices and technical concepts. It was once widely believed that in 1617, Veranzio, then aged 65 and seriously ill, implemented his design and tested the parachute by jumping from St Mark's Campanile, from a bridge nearby, or from St Martin's Cathedral in Bratislava . Various publications incorrectly claimed the event was documented some thirty years later by John Wilkins , one of
2240-462: A parachute stored or housed in a cone-shaped casing under the airplane and attached to a harness on the jumper's body. Štefan Banič patented an umbrella-like design in 1914, and sold (or donated) the patent to the United States military, which later modified his design, resulting in the first military parachute. Banič had been the first person to patent the parachute, and his design was
2352-438: A parachute to descend. (This event was not witnessed by others.) On 12 October 1799, Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin ascended in a gondola attached to a balloon. At 900 meters she detached the gondola from the balloon and descended in the gondola by parachute. In doing so, she became the first woman to parachute. She went on to complete many ascents and parachute descents in towns across France and Europe. Subsequent development of
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#17327827762072464-549: A parachute with a quick release buckle, known as the "Mears parachute", which was in common use from then onwards. The experience with parachutes during the war highlighted the need to develop a design that could be reliably used to exit a disabled airplane. For instance, tethered parachutes did not work well when the aircraft was spinning. After the war, Major Edward L. Hoffman of the United States Army led an effort to develop an improved parachute by bringing together
2576-582: A parachute would be too large for a pilot not wearing one. This is why the German type was stowed in the fuselage, rather than being of the "backpack" type. Weight was – at the very beginning – also a consideration since planes had limited load capacity. Carrying a parachute impeded performance and reduced the useful offensive and fuel load. In the UK, Everard Calthrop , a railway engineer and breeder of Arab horses, invented and marketed through his Aerial Patents Company
2688-422: A propulsion system engine. The 7K-OK model designed for Earth orbit used a 2,810-kilogram (6,190 lb) reentry module measuring 2.17 meters (7.1 ft) in diameter by 2.24 meters (7.3 ft) long, with an interior volume of 4.00 cubic meters (141 cu ft). The 1,100-kilogram (2,400 lb) spheroidal orbital module measured 2.25 meters (7.4 ft) in diameter by 3.45 meters (11.3 ft) long with
2800-403: A range of other uncrewed satellites . It was a single-seat capsule that was 4.4 meters long and 2.4 meters in diameter, weighing 4.73 tonnes at launch. The reentry module was completely covered in ablative heat shield material, 2.3 meters (7.5 ft) in diameter, weighing 2,460 kilograms (5,420 lb). The capsule was covered with a nose cone to maintain a low-drag profile for launch, with
2912-483: A requirement for qualifying as a first crewed spaceflight under International Aeronautical Federation (IAF) rules, it was later revealed that all Vostok cosmonauts ejected and landed separately from the capsule. The capsule was serviced by an aft-facing conical equipment module 2.25 meters (7.4 ft) long by 2.43 meters (8.0 ft), weighing 2,270 kilograms (5,000 lb) containing nitrogen and oxygen breathing gasses, batteries, fuel, attitude control thrusters, and
3024-458: A revolutionary quick-release mechanism – the ripcord – that allowed a falling aviator to expand the canopy only when safely away from the disabled aircraft. Otto Heinecke, a German airship ground crewman, designed a parachute which the German air service introduced in 1918, becoming the world's first air service to introduce a standard parachute. Schroeder company of Berlin manufactured Heinecke's design. The first successful use of this parachute
3136-533: A ring-shaped canopy, often with a large hole in the centre to release the pressure. Sometimes the ring is broken into ribbons connected by ropes to leak air even more. These large leaks lower the stress on the parachute so it does not burst or shred when it opens. Ribbon parachutes made of Kevlar are used on nuclear bombs, such as the B61 and B83 . The principle of the Ram-Air Multicell Airfoil
3248-616: A second Vostok on a one-day flight on August 6, before the US finally orbited the first American, John Glenn , on February 20, 1962. The United States launched a total of two crewed suborbital Mercury capsules and four crewed orbital capsules, with the longest flight, Mercury-Atlas 9 , making 22 orbits and lasting 32 and one-half hours. Many components in the capsule itself were reachable through their own small access doors. Unlike Mercury, Gemini used completely solid-state electronics, and its modular design made it easy to repair. The Gemini spacecraft
3360-448: A slightly tapered shape to their leading and/or trailing edges when viewed in plan form, and are known as ellipticals. Sometimes all the taper is on the leading edge (front), and sometimes in the trailing edge (tail). Ellipticals are usually used only by sport parachutists. They often have smaller, more numerous fabric cells and are shallower in profile. Their canopies can be anywhere from slightly elliptical to highly elliptical, indicating
3472-528: A spacesuit as a precaution against accidental descent module depressurization. The airlock was jettisoned after use. The lack of ejection seats meant that the Voskhod crew would return to Earth inside their spacecraft unlike the Vostok cosmonauts who ejected and parachuted down separately. Because of this, a new landing system was developed, which added a small solid-fuel rocket to the parachute lines. It fired as
White-Miskell Act - Misplaced Pages Continue
3584-470: A tower while wearing a large cloak. It was recorded that "there was enough air in the folds of his cloak to prevent great injury when he reached the ground." The earliest evidence for the true parachute dates back to the Renaissance period. The oldest parachute design appears in a manuscript from the 1470s attributed to Francesco di Giorgio Martini (British Library, Add MS 34113, fol. 200v), showing
3696-538: A weather logbook each time passengers are to be taken out on the water. The weather log must be available for inspection at all times at the operator's place of business. A commercial operator or person who violates this Act commits a misdemeanor of the Second Degree punishable as provided in Florida Statutes s. 775.082 or s. 775.083. The delay in enacting legislation for the control of paragliding
3808-402: Is a marked improvement over another folio (189v), which depicts a man trying to break the force of his fall using two long cloth streamers fastened to two bars, which he grips with his hands. Shortly after, a more sophisticated parachute was sketched by the polymath Leonardo da Vinci in his Codex Atlanticus (fol. 381v) dated to c. 1485 . Here, the scale of the parachute is in
3920-467: Is designed to have an average rate of descent 14% slower than the T-10D, thus resulting in lower landing injury rates for jumpers. The decline in the rate of descent will reduce the impact energy by almost 25% to lessen the potential for injury. A variation on the round parachute is the pull-down apex parachute, invented by a Frenchman named Pierre-Marcel Lemoigne. The first widely used canopy of this type
4032-804: Is fill it full of nitrogen. They didn't have it filled full of oxygen in the sled test they had. Gemini was the first astronaut-carrying spacecraft to include an onboard computer, the Gemini Guidance Computer , to facilitate management and control of mission maneuvers. This computer, sometimes called the Gemini Spacecraft On-Board Computer (OBC), was very similar to the Saturn Launch Vehicle Digital Computer . The Gemini Guidance Computer weighed 58.98 pounds (26.75 kg). Its core memory had 4096 addresses , each containing
4144-798: Is necessary for a safe return. Capsule-based crewed spacecraft such as Soyuz or Orion are often supported by a service or adapter module, and sometimes augmented with an extra module for extended space operations. Capsules make up the majority of crewed spacecraft designs, although one crewed spaceplane , the Space Shuttle , has flown in orbit. Current examples of crewed space capsules include Soyuz , Shenzhou , and Dragon 2 . Examples of new crew capsules currently in development include NASA's Orion , Boeing's Starliner , Russia's Orel , India's Gaganyaan , and China's Mengzhou . Historic examples of crewed capsules include Vostok , Mercury , Voskhod , Gemini , and Apollo , and active programs include
4256-561: Is usually made of a light, strong fabric. Early parachutes were made of silk . The most common fabric today is nylon . A parachute's canopy is typically dome-shaped, but some are rectangles, inverted domes, and other shapes. A variety of loads are attached to parachutes, including people, food, equipment, space capsules , and bombs . In 852, in Córdoba, Spain , the Moorish man Armen Firman attempted unsuccessfully to fly by jumping from
4368-551: The New Shepard launches. A crewed space capsule must be able to sustain life in an often demanding thermal and radiation environment in the vacuum of space. It may be expendable (used once, like Soyuz) or reusable (like Crew Dragon ). The Vostok was the Soviet Union 's first crewed space capsule. The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 , accomplished on April 12, 1961 by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin . The capsule
4480-697: The Rogallo wing , among other shapes and forms. These were usually an attempt to increase the forward speed and reduce the landing speed offered by the other options at the time. The ram-air parachute's development and the subsequent introduction of the sail slider to slow deployment reduced the level of experimentation in the sport parachuting community. The parachutes are also hard to build. Ribbon and ring parachutes have similarities to annular designs. They are frequently designed to deploy at supersonic speeds. A conventional parachute would instantly burst upon opening and be shredded at such speeds. Ribbon parachutes have
4592-651: The "Mad Major", successfully jumped from Tower Bridge in London, which led to the balloonists of the Royal Flying Corps using parachutes, though they were issued for use in aircraft. In 1911, Solomon Lee Van Meter, Jr. of Lexington, Kentucky, submitted an application for, and in July 1916 received, a patent for a backpack style parachute – the Aviatory Life Buoy. His self-contained device featured
White-Miskell Act - Misplaced Pages Continue
4704-537: The Block I design. Block I would be used for uncrewed test flights and a limited number of Earth orbit crewed flights. Though the service propulsion engine was now bigger than required, its design was not changed since significant development was already in progress; however, the propellant tanks were downsized slightly to reflect the modified fuel requirement. Based on astronaut preference, the Block II CM would replace
4816-653: The Federal Aviation Administration governing ultralight vehicles as defined in 14 C.F.R. part 103 A person may not operate any vessel towing a parasail or engage in parasailing or operate a moored balloon within 100 feet of the marked channel of the Florida Intracoastal Waterway or within 2 miles of the boundary of any airport unless otherwise permitted under federal law. A person may not engage in kite boarding or kite surfing within an area that extends 1 mile in
4928-460: The French word for fall , to describe the aeronautical device's real function. Also in 1785, Jean-Pierre Blanchard demonstrated it as a means of safely disembarking from a hot-air balloon . While Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dog as the passenger, he later claimed to have had the opportunity to try it himself in 1793 when his hot air balloon ruptured, and he used
5040-463: The Germans, where the bag was stored in a compartment directly behind the pilot. In many instances where it did not work the shroud lines became entangled with the spinning aircraft. Although this type of parachute saved a number of famous German fighter pilots, including Hermann Göring , no parachutes were issued to the crews of Allied " heavier-than-air " aircraft. It has been claimed that the reason
5152-542: The McDonnell Aircraft Corporation as its contractor in 1959. The Mercury spacecraft's principal designer was Maxime Faget , who started research for human spaceflight during the time of the NACA. It was 10.8 feet (3.3 m) long and 6.0 feet (1.8 m) wide; with the launch escape system added, the overall length was 25.9 feet (7.9 m). With 100 cubic feet (2.8 m ) of habitable volume,
5264-474: The Office of Insurance Regulation or an eligible surplus lines insurer. This policy must provide bodily injury liability coverage in the amounts of at least $ 1 million per occurrence and $ 2 million annual aggregate. Proof of insurance must be available for inspection at the location where commercial parasailing is offered or provided for consideration, and each customer who requests such proof shall be provided with
5376-484: The United States Army T-10 static-line parachute. A round parachute with no holes in it is more prone to oscillate and is not considered to be steerable. Some parachutes have inverted dome-shaped canopies. These are primarily used for dropping non-human payloads due to their faster rate of descent. Forward speed (5–13 km/h) and steering can be achieved by cuts in various sections (gores) across
5488-478: The United States Army as it replaces its older T-10 parachutes with T-11 parachutes under a program called Advanced Tactical Parachute System (ATPS). The ATPS canopy is a highly modified version of a cross/ cruciform platform and is square in appearance. The ATPS system will reduce the rate of descent by 30 percent from 21 feet per second (6.4 m/s) to 15.75 feet per second (4.80 m/s). The T-11
5600-519: The airframe of their spinning aircraft or because of harness failure, a problem fixed in later versions. The French, British, American and Italian air services later based their first parachute designs on the Heinecke parachute to varying extents. In the UK, Sir Frank Mears , who was serving as a Major in the Royal Flying Corps in France (Kite Balloon section), registered a patent in July 1918 for
5712-566: The amount of taper in the canopy design, which is often an indicator of the responsiveness of the canopy to control input for a given wing loading, and of the level of experience required to pilot the canopy safely. The rectangular parachute designs tend to look like square, inflatable air mattresses with open front ends. They are generally safer to operate because they are less prone to dive rapidly with relatively small control inputs, they are usually flown with lower wing loadings per square foot of area, and they glide more slowly. They typically have
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#17327827762075824-453: The apex closer to the load, distorting the round shape into a somewhat flattened or lenticular shape when viewed from the side. And while called rounds , they generally have an elliptical shape when viewed from above or below, with the sides bulging out more than the for'd-and-aft dimension, the chord (see the lower photo to the right and you likely can ascertain the difference). Due to their lenticular shape and appropriate venting, they have
5936-608: The approximate size of a fireball produced by an exploding launch vehicle and from this he gauged that the Titan II would produce a much smaller explosion, thus the spacecraft could get away with ejection seats. Maxime Faget , the designer of the Mercury LES, was on the other hand less-than-enthusiastic about this setup. Aside from the possibility of the ejection seats seriously injuring the astronauts, they would also only be usable for about 40 seconds after liftoff, by which point
6048-550: The area of operation include a sustained wind speed of more than 20 miles per hour; if wind gusts are 15 miles per hour higher than the sustained wind speed; if the wind speed during gusts exceeds 25 miles per hour; if rain or heavy fog results in reduced visibility of less than 0.5 mile; or if a known lightning storm comes within 7 miles of the parasailing area. The operator of the vessel engaged in commercial parasailing shall use all available means to determine prevailing and forecasted weather conditions and record this information in
6160-681: The awarding of the Robert J. Collier Trophy to Major Edward L. Hoffman in 1926. Irvin became the first person to make a premeditated free-fall parachute jump from an airplane. An early brochure of the Irvin Air Chute Company credits William O'Connor as having become, on 24 August 1920, at McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio , the first person to be saved by an Irvin parachute. Test pilot Lt. Harold R. Harris made another life-saving jump at McCook Field on 20 October 1922. Shortly after Harris' jump, two Dayton newspaper reporters suggested
6272-405: The back, or by cutting four lines in the back, thereby modifying the canopy shape to allow air to escape from the back of the canopy, providing limited forward speed. Other modifications sometimes used are cuts in various gores to cause some of the skirt to bow out. Turning is accomplished by forming the edges of the modifications, giving the parachute more speed from one side of the modification than
6384-494: The best elements of multiple parachute designs. Participants in the effort included Leslie Irvin and James Floyd Smith . The team eventually created the Airplane Parachute Type-A. This incorporated three key elements: In 1919, Irvin successfully tested the parachute by jumping from an airplane. The Type-A parachute was put into production and over time saved a number of lives. The effort was recognized by
6496-541: The booster would be attaining Mach 1 speed and ejection would no longer be possible. He was also concerned about the astronauts being launched through the Titan's exhaust plume if they ejected in-flight and later added, "The best thing about Gemini was that they never had to make an escape." The Gemini ejection system was never tested with the Gemini cabin pressurized with pure oxygen, as it was prior to launch. In January 1967,
6608-571: The braking effects of a parachute by accelerating a Russo-Balt automobile to its top speed and then opening a parachute attached to the back seat, thus also inventing the drogue parachute . On 1 March 1912, U.S. Army Captain Albert Berry made the first (attached-type) parachute jump in the United States from a fixed-wing aircraft , a Benoist pusher, while flying above Jefferson Barracks , St. Louis, Missouri . The jump utilized
6720-431: The canopy an annular geometry. This hole can be very pronounced in some designs, taking up more 'space' than the parachute. They also have decreased horizontal drag due to their flatter shape and, when combined with rear-facing vents, can have considerable forward speed. Truly annular designs - with a hole large enough that the canopy can be classified as ring-shaped - are uncommon. Sport parachuting has experimented with
6832-477: The canopy to eliminate violent oscillations. In 1887, Park Van Tassel and Thomas Scott Baldwin invented a parachute in San Francisco, California, with Baldwin making the first successful parachute jump in the western United States. In 1907 Charles Broadwick demonstrated two key advances in the parachute he used to jump from hot air balloons at fairs : he folded his parachute into a backpack , and
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#17327827762076944-421: The capsule had to be protected from reentry heat on all sides, determining the spherical design (as opposed to Project Mercury 's conical design, which allowed for maximum volume while minimizing the heat shield diameter). During reentry, the heat of atmospheric friction is so great that air molecules around the capsule are ionized, creating a layer of plasma around the capsule which blocks radio communication with
7056-406: The capsule was just large enough for a single crew member. Inside were 120 controls: 55 electrical switches, 30 fuses and 35 mechanical levers. The heaviest spacecraft, Mercury-Atlas 9, weighed 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg) fully loaded. Its outer skin was made of René 41 , a nickel alloy able to withstand high temperatures. The spacecraft was cone shaped, with a neck at the narrow end. It had
7168-495: The creation of the Caterpillar Club for successful parachute jumps from disabled aircraft. Beginning with Italy in 1927, several countries experimented with using parachutes to drop soldiers behind enemy lines . The regular Soviet Airborne Troops were established as early as 1931 after a number of experimental military mass jumps starting from 2 August 1930. Earlier the same year, the first Soviet mass jumps led to
7280-464: The descent module neared touchdown, providing a softer landing. The Mercury program was the United States' first crewed space program. It ran from 1958 through 1963, with the goal of putting a human in orbit around the Earth and returning him safely. The program used a small capsule attached to a booster rocket to achieve orbit. The development of the Mercury capsule began in earnest after NASA selected
7392-501: The development of the parachuting sport in the Soviet Union . By the time of World War II , large airborne forces were trained and used in surprise attacks, as in the battles for Fort Eben-Emael and The Hague , the first large-scale, opposed landings of paratroopers in military history, by the Germans. This was followed later in the war by airborne assaults on a larger scale, such as the Battle of Crete and Operation Market Garden ,
7504-410: The ejection seats could not be used, the astronauts would return to Earth inside the spacecraft, which would separate from the launch vehicle. The main proponent of using ejection seats was Chamberlin, who had never liked the Mercury escape tower and wished to use a simpler alternative that would also reduce weight. He reviewed several films of Atlas and Titan II ICBM failures, which he used to estimate
7616-617: The fatal Apollo 1 fire demonstrated that pressurizing a spacecraft with pure oxygen created an extremely dangerous fire hazard. In a 1997 oral history, astronaut Thomas P. Stafford commented on the Gemini 6 launch abort in December 1965, when he and command pilot Wally Schirra nearly ejected from the spacecraft: So it turns out what we would have seen, had we had to do that, would have been two Roman candles going out, because we were 15 or 16 psi, pure oxygen, soaking in that for an hour and
7728-599: The fire was probably started by a spark from a frayed wire, and fed by combustible materials that should not have been in the cabin. The crewed flight program was delayed while design changes were made to the Block II spacecraft to replace the pure oxygen pre-launch atmosphere with an air-like nitrogen/oxygen mixture, eliminate combustible materials from the cabin and the astronauts' space suits, and seal all electrical wiring and corrosive coolant lines. The Block II spacecraft weighed 63,500 pounds (28,800 kg) fully fueled, and
7840-556: The first jump using a nylon parachute in June 1942, the industry switched to nylon. Today's modern parachutes are classified into two categories – ascending and descending canopies. All ascending canopies refer to paragliders , built specifically to ascend and stay aloft as long as possible. Other parachutes, including ram-air non-elliptical, are classified as descending canopies by manufacturers. Some modern parachutes are classified as semi-rigid wings, which are maneuverable and can make
7952-671: The first to properly function in the 20th century. On June 21, 1913, Georgia Broadwick became the first woman to parachute-jump from a moving aircraft, doing so over Los Angeles, California . In 1914, while doing demonstrations for the U.S. Army , Broadwick deployed her chute manually, thus becoming the first person to jump free-fall . The first military use of the parachute was by artillery observers on tethered observation balloons in World War I . These were tempting targets for enemy fighter aircraft , though difficult to destroy, due to their heavy anti-aircraft defenses. Because it
8064-585: The founders of, and secretary of, the Royal Society in London , in his book Mathematical Magick or, the Wonders that may be Performed by Mechanical Geometry , published in London in 1648. However, Wilkins wrote about flying, not parachutes, and does not mention Veranzio, a parachute jump, or any event in 1617. Doubts about this test, which include a lack of written evidence, suggest it never occurred, and
8176-508: The ground, with their results (retrofire times and firing attitude) then transmitted to the spacecraft by radio while in flight. All computer systems used in the Mercury space program were housed in NASA facilities on Earth . The computer systems were IBM 701 computers. The US launched its first Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard on a suborbital flight almost a month after the first crewed orbital spaceflight. The Soviets were able to launch
8288-409: The ground. However, ionized gases in the plasma layer can also be used to create an artificial radio window, allowing communication signals to be transmitted and received despite the interference. Some control of the capsule's reentry orientation was possible by offsetting its center of gravity. Proper orientation with the cosmonaut's back to the direction of flight was necessary in order to best sustain
8400-484: The insurance carrier's name and address and the insurance policy number. The operator of a vessel engaged in commercial parasailing must have a current and valid license issued by the United States Coast Guard authorizing the operator to carry passengers for hire. The license must be appropriate for the number of passengers carried and the displacement of the vessel. The license must be carried on
8512-607: The latter being the largest airborne military operation ever. Aircraft crew were routinely equipped with parachutes for emergencies as well. In 1937, drag chutes were used in aviation for the first time, by Soviet airplanes in the Arctic that were providing support for the polar expeditions of the era, such as the first drifting ice station , North Pole-1 . The drag chute allowed airplanes to land safely on smaller ice floes . Most parachutes were made of silk until World War II cut off supplies from Japan. After Adeline Gray made
8624-692: The leading edge of the airfoil. The fabric is shaped and the parachute lines trimmed under load such that the ballooning fabric inflates into an airfoil shape. This airfoil is sometimes maintained by use of fabric one-way valves called airlocks . "The first jump of this canopy (a Jalbert Parafoil) was made by International Skydiving Hall of Fame member Paul 'Pop' Poppenhager." Personal ram-air parachutes are loosely divided into two varieties – rectangular or tapered – commonly called "squares" or "ellipticals", respectively. Medium-performance canopies (reserve-, BASE -, canopy formation-, and accuracy-type) are usually rectangular. High-performance, ram-air parachutes have
8736-500: The main parachute. When the balloon crew jumped the main part of the parachute was pulled from the bag by the crew's waist harness, first the shroud lines, followed by the main canopy. This type of parachute was first adopted on a large scale for their observation balloon crews by the Germans, and then later by the British and French. While this type of unit worked well from balloons, it had mixed results when used on fixed-wing aircraft by
8848-411: The marine organisms. Modern sports parachutists rarely use this type. The first round parachutes were simple, flat circulars. These early parachutes suffered from instability caused by oscillations. A hole in the apex helped to vent some air and reduce the oscillations. Many military applications adopted conical, i.e., cone-shaped, or parabolic (a flat circular canopy with an extended skirt) shapes, such as
8960-449: The narrow end of the spacecraft contained three parachutes: a drogue to stabilize free fall and two main chutes, a primary and reserve. Between the heat shield and inner wall of the crew compartment was a landing skirt, deployed by letting down the heat shield before landing. On top of the recovery compartment was the antenna section ( 5 ) containing both antennas for communication and scanners for guiding spacecraft orientation. Attached
9072-476: The net spacecraft mass, allowing the mission to be launched with a single Saturn V . Since significant development work had started on the design, it was decided to continue with the existing design as Block I, while a Block II version capable of rendezvous with the LEM would be developed in parallel. Besides addition of a docking tunnel and probe, Block II would employ equipment improvements based on lessons learned from
9184-480: The other. This gives the jumpers the ability to steer the parachute (such as the United States Army MC series parachutes), enabling them to avoid obstacles and to turn into the wind to minimize horizontal speed at landing . The unique design characteristics of cruciform parachutes decrease oscillation (its user swinging back and forth) and violent turns during descent. This technology will be used by
9296-474: The package could be severed when it was no longer needed. Next to the heat shield was the pressurized crew compartment ( 3 ). Inside, an astronaut would be strapped to a form-fitting seat with instruments in front of him and with his back to the heat shield. Underneath the seat was the environmental control system supplying oxygen and heat, scrubbing the air of CO 2 , vapor and odors, and (on orbital flights) collecting urine. The recovery compartment ( 4 ) at
9408-399: The parachute focused on it becoming more compact. While the early parachutes were made of linen stretched over a wooden frame, in the late 1790s, Blanchard began making parachutes from folded silk , taking advantage of silk's strength and light weight . In 1797, André Garnerin made the first descent of a "frameless" parachute covered in silk. In 1804, Jérôme Lalande introduced a vent in
9520-461: The parachute in his arms as he left the aircraft. In the same year (1911), Russian Gleb Kotelnikov invented the first knapsack parachute, although Hermann Lattemann and his wife Käthe Paulus had been jumping with bagged parachutes in the last decade of the 19th century. In 1912, on a road near Tsarskoye Selo , years before it became part of St. Petersburg , Kotelnikov successfully demonstrated
9632-526: The parachute was pulled from the pack by a static line attached to the balloon. When Broadwick jumped from the balloon, the static line became taut, pulled the parachute from the pack, and then snapped. In 1911 a successful test took place with a dummy at the Eiffel Tower in Paris . The puppet's weight was 75 kg (165 lb); the parachute's weight was 21 kg (46 lb). The cables between
9744-465: The plug-door hatch design. While participating in a pre-launch test on the pad on January 27, 1967, in preparation for the first crewed launch in February, the entire crew of Apollo 1 —Grissom, Edward H. White , and Roger Chaffee —were killed in a fire that swept through the cabin. The plug door made it impossible for the astronauts to escape or be removed before their deaths. An investigation revealed
9856-404: The puppet and the parachute were 9 m (30 ft) long. On February 4, 1912, Franz Reichelt jumped to his death from the tower during initial testing of his wearable parachute. Also in 1911, Grant Morton made the first parachute jump from an airplane , a Wright Model B piloted by Phil Parmalee , at Venice Beach , California . Morton's device was of the "throw-out" type where he held
9968-457: The retrorocket. It could support flights as long as ten days. Six Vostok launches were successfully conducted, the last two pairs in concurrent flights. The longest flight was just short of five days, on Vostok 5 on June 14–19, 1963. Since the attitude control thrusters were located in the instrument module which was discarded immediately prior to reentry, the reentry module's path and orientation could not be actively controlled. This meant that
10080-624: The same concept (orbital, reentry and service modules) as Soyuz . Its first uncrewed test flight was in 1999, and the first crewed flight in October 2003 carried Yang Liwei for 14 Earth orbits. The seven-seat SpaceX Dragon 2 capsule first launched crew to the International Space Station on 30 May 2020 on the Demo-2 mission for NASA. Although originally envisaged as a development of SpaceX's uncrewed Dragon capsule which
10192-468: The square frame but replaced the canopy with a bulging sail-like piece of cloth that he came to realize decelerates a fall more effectively. A now-famous depiction of a parachute that he dubbed Homo Volans (Flying Man), showing a man parachuting from a tower, presumably St Mark's Campanile in Venice , appeared in his book on mechanics, Machinae Novae ("New Machines", published in 1615 or 1616), alongside
10304-407: The two-piece plug door hatch cover, chosen to avoid an accidental hatch opening such as had happened on Gus Grissom 's Mercury-Redstone 4 flight, with a one-piece, outward-opening hatch to make egress easier at the end of the mission. The Mercury-Gemini practice of using a prelaunch atmosphere of 16.7 pounds per square inch (1,150 mbar) pure oxygen proved to be disastrous in combination with
10416-436: The use of the word elliptical for these 'round' parachutes is somewhat dated and may cause slight confusion, since some 'squares' (i.e. ram-airs) are elliptical nowadays, too. Some designs with a pull-down apex have the fabric removed from the apex to open a hole through which air can exit (most, if not all, round canopies have at least a small hole to allow easier tie-down for packing - these aren't considered annular), giving
10528-407: The vessel and be available for inspection while engaging in commercial parasailing activities. A vessel engaged in commercial parasailing must be equipped with a functional marine VHF radio and a separate electronic device capable of providing access to National Weather Service forecasts and current weather conditions. Commercial parasailing is prohibited if the current observed wind conditions in
10640-518: The which also maximized the 8 to 9 g-force . The Vostok design was modified to permit carrying multi-cosmonaut crews, and flown as two flights of the Voskhod programme . The cylindrical interior cabin was replaced with a wider, rectangular cabin which could hold either three cosmonauts seated abreast (Voskhod 1), or two cosmonauts with an inflatable airlock in between them, to permit extravehicular activity (Voskhod 2). A backup solid-fuel retro rocket
10752-557: Was a flap used to ensure the spacecraft was faced heat shield first during reentry. A launch escape system ( 6 ) was mounted to the narrow end of the spacecraft containing three small solid-fueled rockets which could be fired briefly in a launch failure to separate the capsule safely from its booster. It would deploy the capsule's parachute for a landing nearby at sea. (See also Mission profile for details.) The Mercury spacecraft did not have an on-board computer, instead relying on all computation for reentry to be calculated by computers on
10864-454: Was a major area of criticism prior to introduction of the Bill. Canopy (parachute) A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or aerodynamic lift . A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who can exit from an aircraft at height and descend safely to earth. A parachute
10976-454: Was added to the top of the descent module. Vostok's ejection seat was removed to save space (thus there was no provision for crew escape in the event of a launch or landing emergency). The complete Voskhod spacecraft weighed 5,682 kilograms (12,527 lb). Lack of space meant that the crew members of Voskhod 1 did not wear space suits . Both Voskhod 2 crew members wore spacesuits, as it involved an EVA by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov . An airlock
11088-421: Was by Leutnant Helmut Steinbrecher of Jagdstaffel 46 , who bailed on 27 June 1918 from his stricken fighter airplane to become the first pilot in history to successfully do so. Although many pilots were saved by the Heinecke design, their efficacy was relatively poor. Out of the first 70 German airmen to bail out, around a third died, These fatalities were mostly due to the chute or ripcord becoming entangled in
11200-535: Was called the Para-Commander (made by the Pioneer Parachute Co.), although there are many other canopies with a pull-down apex produced in the years thereafter - these had minor differences in attempts to make a higher performance rig, such as different venting configurations. They are all considered 'round' parachutes, but with suspension lines to the canopy apex that apply load there and pull
11312-432: Was conceived in 1963 by Canadian Domina "Dom" C. Jalbert, but serious problems had to be solved before a ram-air canopy could be marketed to the sport parachuting community. Ram-air parafoils are steerable (as are most canopies used for sport parachuting), and have two layers of fabric—top and bottom—connected by airfoil-shaped fabric ribs to form "cells". The cells fill with higher-pressure air from vents that face forward on
11424-414: Was difficult to escape from them, and dangerous when on fire due to their hydrogen inflation, observers would abandon them and descend by parachute as soon as enemy aircraft were seen. The ground crew would then attempt to retrieve and deflate the balloon as quickly as possible. The main part of the parachute was in a bag suspended from the balloon with the pilot wearing only a simple waist harness attached to
11536-406: Was heavy and complicated, and NASA engineers reasoned that they could do away with it as the Titan II's hypergolic propellants would burn immediately on contact. A Titan II booster explosion had a smaller blast effect and flame than on the cryogenically fueled Atlas and Saturn. Ejection seats were sufficient to separate the astronauts from a malfunctioning launch vehicle. At higher altitudes, where
11648-527: Was instead a misreading of historical notes. The modern parachute was invented in the late 18th century by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand in France , who made the first recorded public jump in 1783. Lenormand also sketched his device beforehand. Two years later, in 1785, Lenormand coined the word "parachute" by hybridizing an Italian prefix para , an imperative form of parare = to avert, defend, resist, guard, shield or shroud, from paro = to parry, and chute ,
11760-527: Was needed because the vehicle's electrical and environmental systems were air-cooled, and complete capsule depressurization would lead to overheating. The airlock weighed 250 kg (551 lb 2 oz), was 700 mm (28 in) in diameter, 770 mm (30 in) high when collapsed for launch. When extended in orbit, it was 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) long, had an internal diameter of 1 m (3 ft 3 in) and an external diameter of 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in). The second crew member wore
11872-527: Was never flown crewed. The Russians continued to develop and fly the Soyuz to this day. Space capsules have also been used for scientific research and experimentation in space. For example, the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft has carried out experiments in life sciences, material sciences, fluid dynamics, and space environment monitoring. The PRC developed its Shenzhou spacecraft in the 1990s based on
11984-554: Was originally designed for use both as a camera platform for the Soviet Union's first spy satellite program, Zenit and as a crewed spacecraft. This dual-use design was crucial in gaining Communist Party support for the program. The design used a spherical reentry module, with a biconic descent module containing attitude control thrusters, on-orbit consumables, and the retro rocket for orbit termination. The basic design has remained in use for some 40 years, gradually adapted for
12096-578: Was successfully tested in 2000 by Briton Adrian Nicholas and again in 2008 by the Swiss skydiver Olivier Vietti-Teppa. According to historian of technology Lynn White , these conical and pyramidal designs, much more elaborate than early artistic jumps with rigid parasols in Asia, mark the origin of "the parachute as we know it." The Croatian polymath and inventor Fausto Veranzio , or Faust Vrančić (1551–1617), examined da Vinci's parachute sketch and kept
12208-426: Was the precursor to the Apollo program which aimed to land humans on the Moon. It was designed to test new techniques for orbital rendezvous and docking, but it also featured improvements in life support systems, spacecraft reentry, and other critical areas. Gemini's emergency launch escape system did not use an escape tower powered by a solid-fuel rocket , but instead used aircraft-style ejection seats . The tower
12320-469: Was to avoid pilots jumping from the plane when hit rather than trying to save the aircraft, but Air Vice Marshall Arthur Gould Lee , himself a pilot during the war, examined the British War Office files after the war and found no evidence of such claim. Airplane cockpits at that time also were not large enough to accommodate a pilot and a parachute, since a seat that would fit a pilot wearing
12432-606: Was used for the NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract, the demands of crewed spaceflight resulted in a significantly redesigned vehicle with limited commonality. The Dragon capsule was designed to be reusable. In fact, SpaceX has flown the same Dragon capsule to the International Space Station multiple times, with the first successful reuse occurring in June 2017. The six-seat Blue Origin developed New Shepard crew capsule
12544-570: Was used in four crewed Earth and lunar orbital test flights, and seven crewed lunar landing missions. A modified version of the spacecraft was also used to ferry three crews to the Skylab space station, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission which docked with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. The Apollo spacecraft was retired after 1974. In 1963, Korolev first proposed the three-man Soyuz spacecraft for use in Earth orbit assembly of
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