Low-Cost Drogue Parachute Deployment System

Blue Origin, LLC Engineering, 2014-15

Liaison(s): Brian Barnes, Rosalind Beckwith ’07, Dan Roche ’05, Laura Stiles, Heather Nelson
Advisor(s): Mary Cardenas
Students(s): Ryland Miller (TL-S), Matt Espy (TL-F), Peter Orme, Spenser Anderson (S), Sherman Lam (S), Sam DeRose (F), Bryan Mehall (F)

Blue Origin, LLC is developing technologies to enable human access to space at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability. To support this goal, the Blue Origin Clinic team has investigated alternatives to the explosive charges typically used to deploy drogue parachutes from spacecraft. The team designed, constructed, and tested a prototype that uses the rapid release of a compressed fluid to deploy a drogue parachute at reduced cost while maintaining system performance.