I'm not clear about some of the reentry procedure, the patent states that the sphere is under very low absolute pressure and is obviously not rigid, the returning astronaut will know it's safe to depart the "vehicle" once the sphere starts to collapse under the higher outside pressure of Earth's atmosphere. But reentry itself will result in fairly high pressures at times and you would want to maintain the sphere shape (for the frontal surface area as well as > 0.47 drag coefficient). A collapsing sphere centered around a mass will end up in more of a tadpole shape, which will have much lower frontal cross section and much lower drag coefficient which may result in inadequate deceleration.

I think the idea is fundamentally workable, of course, I just wonder how much they fleshed out the details.

I wonder when "personal reentry kits" will appear on store.spacex.com

-------- Original Message --------

On January 29, 2018 4:42 PM, Graham Donald (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

Exactly, no fancy computers, just the Mk 1 Eyeball and Brain and maybe a horizon line...

From: Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org>
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Sent: Monday, 29 January 2018, 23:25
Subject: Re: [TML] More meteoric reentry thoughts

On 1/29/2018 4:12 AM, Graham Donald (via tml list) wrote:

> Here is a version from a slightly lower TL this was designed by NASA in

> the 1960s but not patented until 1971. It would be interesting to work

> out the Traveller Stats for it.

> https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19710019375.pdf

Good ol' MOOSE.

---------------

Kelly St. Clair

xxxxxx@efn.org

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