Personal Atmospheric Reentry Kit modeled: https://i.imgur.com/fgkt1Vi.png

The kit is very light, 106.5 kg, and I presumed 100 kg for the Traveller in space suit. I used a drag coefficient of 0.55 for the drogue chute and deploy it at 35 km, and then 1.5 for the full dome parachute and deploy it at 5 km, as described in the JTAS article. I selected a surface area of 11.34 m^2 for the drogue chute and 314.15 m^2 for the full dome chute.

Whoever designed the kit must have done some of the math for it, the drogue chute gets deployed just after heat flux falls off from its peak.

In addition to emergency deorbit, such kits and be used for low passage passengers. Rather than have to go through the bother of landing you can disembark them just outside the atmosphere and let them make their own way to customs.

-------- Original Message --------
 On January 27, 2018 6:33 PM, Thomas Jones-Low <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 1/27/2018 9:15 PM, Tim wrote:
>>On Sat, Jan 27, 2018 at 08:22:15PM -0500, Caleuche wrote:
>>>So I turned to the next obvious option: lifepods. Somewhere I had
>>> once seen a drawing of a Traveller lifepod intended for reentry that
>>> was not pressurized (and open to space even) which basically was a
>>> mass of ablative material on the front, with a space for the
>>> Traveller to lay down on immediately behind it.
>>>That doesn't seem survivable.  You would want at least some shielding
>> from the radiative heat flux and later transsonic airflow around the
>> pod.
>>
>http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Personal_Reentry_Kit
>
> This is one of the early Traveller pieces of cool technology. The idea is to
> have a very small frame and a package of foam for a really light weight package
> before being deployed.
>
>
>     Thomas Jones-Low
>
>Work: xxxxxx@softstart.com
> Home: xxxxxx@gmail.com
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