How safe/controled are parachutes?, looknig for RL details to translate to the game. Options

[Snow_Fox]

They reported on the news that Bush the elder celebrated his 85th birthday by skydiving, again, and he already is planning to do it again when he's 90. It was a tandem jump when he is strapped to a guide but it still makes me ownder.

In the 1940's the parachutes looked much bigger and still did damage if you landed badly. In the 1990's I had a friend in the army who said in parachute training a man he knew broke both legs on a jump.

Today, not only do you see tandem jumps it seems like stunt diverts can actually land on their feet, runnig to break mommentum and not have to do the whole tuck and roll thing, so the question is, has the tech level really improved that much?

[psychophipps]

The current sport chutes are far and away better than the mil-spec jump-n-prays the US military still makes Airborne units use. The sport chutes have vents in them to get some directional thrust, they have controls for steering in a tight radius and other improvements that allow for a good jumper to land in a specific car parking space if they plan their glide path right.

[Snow_Fox]

Yeah i noticed the sports chutes seem to be cut to look like a serries of cylinders to shape the wind while the old WW2 stuff look like domes with the sections looking like pie slices, so if they're so inferior, why does them ilitary still use them? just because htey have big stock piles of green silk?

[Angelone]

They're cheaper, the military won't use the best gear but the cheapest. Budgets you know.

[Writer]

They're cheaper, the military won't use the best gear but the cheapest. Budgets you know.

Exactly. Same reason the US military isn't using the Dragon Skin body armor that came out recently, even though it is far superior to what they have now.

[Neraph]

My mother is airborne, and I don't know how many jumps she's done (a dozen a day, a few days a year, for many many years), but she's never once come off hurt. It also has to do with training. She told me about how after jump school, some of the more... manly men from her unit would jump off 2 story buildings, just because they knew how to take a fall.

Also, don't forget that even the crappy milspec chutes have a backup chute, in case your main doesn't deploy.

EDIT: It should also be noted that a tandem jump means you let a trained person do all the work for you; you're just along for the ride.

[Bob Lord of Evil]

The current sport chutes are far and away better than the mil-spec jump-n-prays the US military still makes Airborne units use. The sport chutes have vents in them to get some directional thrust, they have controls for steering in a tight radius and other improvements that allow for a good jumper to land in a specific car parking space if they plan their glide path right.

Absolutely correct, I have seen jumpers hit their designated spot with ease, looking like they are stepping off a stairway.

They're cheaper, the military won't use the best gear but the cheapest. Budgets you know.

Sadly, very true. Dragon Skin armor is positively awe inspiring and I think it is criminal that soldiers are not allowed to wear it in the field. The corruption of the military industrial complex is beyond the pale.

[Critias]

They're cheaper, the military won't use the best gear but the cheapest. Budgets you know.

Which is part of what always makes me giggle when Shadowrun talks about the wiz-bang novahot "milspec" gear.

[TBRMInsanity]

Which is part of what always makes me giggle when Shadowrun talks about the wiz-bang novahot "milspec" gear.

There is a difference between standard issue (ie what eventually is given to the troops) and milspec (not much but there is a difference). Milspec is the level of quality that a person wanting a contract with the government needs to meet in order to be considered. So some milspec is novahot (expecially some first round prototypes).

Funny thing about budgets, I know in the Canadian forces we are on tight budget constraints, but I never got that feeling from my American counter parts. We needed a vehicle for a patrol when I was overseas so we went over to the Americans to ask if we could borrow a humvee. The Sergant just threw us the keys and said, "if you bring it back, bring it back with a full tank." My sergant's responce was, "sounds good, where do I sign for it?" "What do you men sign for it, just take it and if you bring it back, bring it back with a full tank." "What do you mean by if we bring it back?"
There was three parking lots full of humvees and the quartermaster was more worried about having the vehicles full (in case they needed to do a move out like yesterday) then he was about one going missing. "Its covered in the budget."

[Chrysalis]

I have jumped with both.

The commercial parachute is safe as long as the person using it is safe. You make a mistake, the chute fails. The worst thing you can do is panic. The more trained the person the better they are at the skill. The local rigger who would jump after the rest of us would jump did his jump perfect. Hit the parachute release at the last second (15-20 meters up) chute opened up went up just a bit and walked off. Of course he also had a very special canopy as well.

A good landing should be a walk-off.

The military chutes have to deal with things that a civvie chute doesn't. You might be carrying 150 pounds of kit (as most in the paras do) in addition to your body weight, you will most likely be taking AA fire. You will also be jumping at lower altitudes. There is a back-up chute with the military chute. The military chute is static line.

There are numerous controllable, non-controllabale, low-altitude, high-altitude chutes.

Link: http://www.airborne-sys.com/

The best person on the boards to talk to is Rigger as he is a rigger and knows more about parachutes than I ever will.

[Kerenshara]

The commercial parachute is safe as long as the person using it is safe. You make a mistake, the chute fails. The worst thing you can do is panic. The more trained the person the better they are at the skill. The local rigger who would jump after the rest of us would jump did his jump perfect. Hit the parachute release at the last second (15-20 meters up) chute opened up went up just a bit and walked off. Of course he also had a very special canopy as well.

A good landing should be a walk-off.

Just so, and well stated.

The military chutes have to deal with things that a civvie chute doesn't. You might be carrying 150 pounds of kit (as most in the paras do, which I am not) in addition to your body weight, you will most likely be taking AA fire. You will also be jumping at lower altitudes. There is only one chute with the military chute.

The best person on the boards to talk to is Rigger as he is a rigger and knows more about parachutes than I ever will.

One of the constraints you have to deal with on the "dangerous" standard-issue military "airborne" 'chute is more than just the total mass (man + LOTS of kit), but also two more problems we saw in WWII over and over:

A man hanging from a conventional 'chute calculated for the softest (safest) possible landing is a hanging duck against small-arms fire while on the way down, so a certain amount of calculation goes into the optimum drop-rate when those chutes are designed. Don't make the mistake of thinking they're low-quality or poorly-designed items that could be better replaced with a civilian item. The rate they fall at, that makes them seem more dangerous, is precisely calculated as an acceptable level of risk balanced against a LOT of other factors.

Departing an aircraft with a static line is a violent and disorienting event, and with modern aircraft this can be happening at very high speeds; We're not talking a calm jump out the side of a custom-build jump-plane in clear weather from 1,500 meters. You depart the aircraft at well over a hundred knots and your chute immediately begins to deploy because you don't have much time in a low-altitude combat jump. If the primary doesn't open immediately (and cleanly) you have only seconds to deploy the secondary (which has a smaller canopy/faster corresponding drop-rate) and hope for the best. Civilian 'chutes don't have to contend with this, and would probably fail if they had to. They're designed for a totally diferent set of requirements.

As a final note, the para-sail is effectively a non-rigid ram-air airfoil, not unlike that on an airplane, which is steered with a variation on the same system actually employed by the Wright Brothers in 1903. It is just as precisely controlable as any aircraft, with a stall speed that is functionally negligable. This is the canopy of choice for any non-static-line higher-altitude jump, and in night time conditions, is acceptable despite the slow rate of decent because even with night vision gear, correctly judging distance by eye on what is a relatively fast-moving target is actually pretty tough. Give that a shot with nothing but the Mark One eyeball the Creator issued you at birth and some starlight on an overcast night, and let me know how well you do. The other up-shot of this is that the decending troops can land in close order and within the perimiter of their target much like the glider-born shock troops of Nazi Germany in the assaults on the Belgian fortresses.

All the military cannopies are just as lovingly designed, engineered (Think multi-million dollar computer design and modelling here, folks) and put together as any civilian rig. They just have a different set of priorities and constraints which dramatically alter the way they function by comparison.

[Snow_Fox]

Holy crap! I honestly never thought of that but it would make sense, for the reason you gave, that a paratrooper might want to drop faster than a civilian or even a special ops person who isn't expected over the target. Spending less time in the air helpless as someone takes pot shots at you. I was thinking of cases like the American General Gavin who cracked his spine landing at Arnhem but The Poles at Arnhem and the Germans on Crete suffered very high casualties from ground fire before they were boots on the ground. Thank you.

[HappyDaze]

Recently had to work with a trained jumper (Ranger and civilian/recreational jumper) that made a bad landing on a recreational jump. His leg was all sorts of fucked-up, but his training kept him alive. He still tried to talk me into skydiving, but I think I'll pass... gravity and I have a tense neutrality at the moment and I'd hate to heat things up on that front.

[Snow_Fox]

Yeah, part of me thinks it's way cool, part of me knows when I went up in a plane I'd have 'issues' with getting out early.

Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge said it best when he decleared, jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is not a normal act.

A friend of mine said he did not want to do it because "I don't want to hurt the pilot's feeling be getting out early. He might think I don't have any faith in him."

[Writer]

Which is part of what always makes me giggle when Shadowrun talks about the wiz-bang novahot "milspec" gear.

Military specifications don't mean better quality, necessarily. It refers to the specifications given by the military that probably go beyond civilian usage.

For example, let's look at aircraft. The civilian airplane is usually about transportation of cargo and people. There are some military airplanes that fill the same role, but there are other roles that would never fall into civilian specifications. Civilian aircraft has no real need for high-G maneuverability, extreme speeds, far reaching sensors and targeting systems, or a variety of weapon systems. Civilian manufacturing would never have designed the A-22 Raptor because it costs too much to design and build, and the market would be too small (one or two of the richest flyers in the world).

[Kerenshara]

Holy crap! I honestly never thought of that but it would make sense, for the reason you gave, that a paratrooper might want to drop faster than a civilian or even a special ops person who isn't expected over the target. Spending less time in the air helpless as someone takes pot shots at you. I was thinking of cases like the American General Gavin who cracked his spine landing at Arnhem but The Poles at Arnhem and the Germans on Crete suffered very high casualties from ground fire before they were boots on the ground. Thank you.

*bows in the Japanese fashion*

Domo arigato.

I see it as my job here to bring a little different perspective when I can. You should try seeing the world through MY eyes one of these days. *grin*

[Kerenshara]

Military specifications don't mean better quality, necessarily. It refers to the specifications given by the military that probably go beyond civilian usage.

For example, let's look at aircraft. The civilian airplane is usually about transportation of cargo and people. There are some military airplanes that fill the same role, but there are other roles that would never fall into civilian specifications. Civilian aircraft has no real need for high-G maneuverability, extreme speeds, far reaching sensors and targeting systems, or a variety of weapon systems. Civilian manufacturing would never have designed the A-22 Raptor because it costs too much to design and build, and the market would be too small (one or two of the richest flyers in the world).

Careful about what examples you try to make: My father build an airplane based on a mid-war design (1930's) that was spec'd for +9g/-3g, and if he had installed an acrobatic engine and a diferently plumbed fuel tank, it would have been quite capable of impressive aerobatics.
The majority of military specifications we're talking about when the concept of "MilSpec" comes up deal with things like resiliency, fault tolerance, the ability to operate in harsh environments, uniformity, compatibility and special needs (that's the expansive segment). Another thing to remember is that the Shadowrun universe split from reality in the 80's when the military STILL had the most and best computers and the most pervasive access to things like advanced materials. As we speak I am eating Thai with a titanium spork. Titanium, used as an eating utensil, a concept that would have been ridiculed as nonsense beyond even humor when the universe was conceptualized and began its parallel course. Even NASA used aluminum for the purpose on the Space Shuttle, if they weren't using a high-end thermoplastic. The fact that the Soviets built entire submarines out of the stuff was enough to make American military planners simultaneously drool with pure envy and boggle at the idea. (Remember, the MiG-25 Foxbat "Mach 3" interceptor was made of Stainless Steel, while the American Blackbird was almost primarily titanium, and was regarded as being beyond space age; Even the Space Shuttle used aluminum as the primary material for the airframe, beneath the heat shielding.)
MilSpec is their code phrase, essentially, for "way more than you have the nuyen for and forget actually getting access to it!"

[kzt]

Exactly. Same reason the US military isn't using the Dragon Skin body armor that came out recently, even though it is far superior to what they have now.

Other than the fact that it falls apart, is vastly heavier, and won't actually stop bullets, yes, it's far superior. And more expensive.

Pinnacle Armor debarred from government contracts due to fraud.

[kzt]

Germans on Crete suffered very high casualties from ground fire before they were boots on the ground. Thank you.

There were huge issues with the tactical aspects of Luftwaffe parachuting doctrine. Like the troops jumping essentially unarmed and having to search for their weapon containers....

[Kerenshara]

Other than the fact that it falls apart, is vastly heavier, and won't actually stop bullets, yes, it's far superior. And more expensive.

I wasn't going to bring up the "down sides" I had started to hear talk about. Seems it's not the God Armor we were lead to believe, and maybe for once somebody in Army Logistics knew a lemon when they saw it.

[kzt]

Body armor experts seem agreed that the basic idea of flexible armor is great, but the actual pinnacle product isn't what people are looking for. It might eventually prove the basis of a design that works well, but it isn't there today.

[psychophipps]

And for the record, the Dragonskin armor failed the US military testing in both environmental integrity and ballistic protection so budget had nothing to do with it. The DS armor failed to make the grade with a company rep standing right there with a copy of the test standards in-hand to be sure that the test was fair, and the company threw a hissy despite the Army being interested in seeing their next generation product for it's great technological potential. The DS armor also weighed almost 20 lbs more than the current Interceptor armor so...yeah.

[Writer]

Careful about what examples you try to make: My father build an airplane based on a mid-war design (1930's) that was spec'd for +9g/-3g, and if he had installed an acrobatic engine and a diferently plumbed fuel tank, it would have been quite capable of impressive aerobatics.

Right, given enough money and resources, a civilian can build just about anything they want, but they are not going to do it for a commercial market. There may be some civilian aircraft that can compete with military aircraft in terms of performance, but you won't find them in large quantities. There isn't really a "need" for it, and that "need" is met by "specification". Civilian, or should I be more specific and say commercial, aircraft has certain needs that focus more on efficiency and economy. There is nothing efficient or economic about afterburners, but in a dog fight, they can sure make a difference. Sensors on a civilian aircraft have a minimum requirement, but they are usually supported at both ends of their flight by ground communications and sensors. High end sensors reaches diminishing returns as the cost increases. Military aircraft needs to see the enemy before the enemy sees it, so farther is better. If you can finagle a senate commity to approve it, who cares how much it costs.

I do want to support your point that civilians should not be under estimated, so let us take a moment to applaud Michael Melvill for building his little space ship that carried him up to 100 kilometers in a bid to build a reusable civilian space ship.

MilSpec is their code phrase, essentially, for "way more than you have the nuyen for and forget actually getting access to it!"

This is something we definitely agree on : )

[Chrysalis]

Are we talking about 1940s parachutes; 2070s parachutes; that pioneer spirit; military armor; or military vs. civilian design in aviation?

Or is this a bait and switch thread?

[Bob Lord of Evil]

And for the record, the Dragonskin armor failed the US military testing in both environmental integrity and ballistic protection so budget had nothing to do with it. The DS armor failed to make the grade with a company rep standing right there with a copy of the test standards in-hand to be sure that the test was fair, and the company threw a hissy despite the Army being interested in seeing their next generation product for it's great technological potential. The DS armor also weighed almost 20 lbs more than the current Interceptor armor so...yeah.

Look at how all of this went down, this reeks of payoffs. Here is a reasonable timeline for events.

Dragon Skin

Interceptor Armor is not rated III-A, Dragon Skin was and would still be if money hadn't changed hands.