What is a ballistic parachute?
Ultralight and hang glider pilots have long used emergency parachutes which are attached to the aircraft instead of the pilot. You don’t have to bail out. Instead the pilot and the aircraft float down together. The early “hand-deployed” designs required you to throw a 6-10 lbs package containing the chute out into the airstream and you hoped that it inflated in time. Ballistic parachutes have a mechanical device to very quickly “fire” the chute into the airstream which allows for MUCH faster deployment. Manufacturers have claimed a deployment in only 2 seconds which allows for a possible successful deployment as low as 100 ft. AGL. Some designs pack the chute very tightly inside a canister. The earliest versions used an explosive charge to fire a projectile which then pulled out the chute. Later designs have gone to a chemical rocket (no recoil). A new design uses compressed air or gas. The term “ballistic” is often loosely used to describe all types of rapid deployment schemes althoug
Ultralight and hang glider pilots have long used emergency parachutes which are attached to the aircraft instead of the pilot. You don’t have to bail out. Instead the pilot and the aircraft float down together. The early “hand-deployed” designs required you to throw a 6-10 lbs package containing the chute out into the airstream and you hoped that it inflated in time. Ballistic parachutes have a mechanical device to very quickly “fire” the chute into the airstream which allows for MUCH faster deployment. Manufacturers have claimed a deployment in only 2 seconds which allows for a possible successful deployment as low as 100 ft. AGL. Some designs pack the chute very tightly inside a canister. The earliest versions used an explosive charge to fire a projectile which then pulled out the chute. Later designs have gone to a chemical rocket (no recoil). A new design uses compressed air or gas. The term “ballistic” is often loosely used to describe all types of rapid deployment schemes althoug
