Analysis of a Free-Fall Ballute Vehicle

Abstract

Ballutes, balloon-parachutes, have been of considerable interest for atmospheric reentry for decades. 7 While hyper-and super-sonic simulations are considered to be relatively reliable, 6,9 the subsonic stability predictions of ballutes are not reliable. In this effort a ballute-like reentry vehicle was dropped into free fall from 98,000 ft. and 6 DOF inertial