![]() ![]() On those tests, the wing was deployed on the ground and towed, a la air-launched sailplanes, to altitude and cut loose to practice the landing approach. (Bad wiring and bad sequencing responsible for the failures were blamed on NAA negligence and lack of good project management and support, at a time they were trying to get their hands and heads around the Apollo contract.) The only manned tests used a scaled version of the Gemini, with room for one pilot. Again IIRC, there was also at least one test where the wing failed to deploy properly, and the rescue chutes also failed, losing yet another boilerplate. One reason NAA was so conservative about getting the boilerplate back at that point in the test program was that they had some total failures early in the program, just testing the backup ("rescue") chutes, where both the main and backup rescue chutes failed and boilerplates were destroyed. So, in each case of a successful deploy, they let it glide down for a while, then cut the paraglider away and deployed the backup parachutes to recover the boilerplate. ![]() ![]() And the tests were too dangerous to put crew into the capsule. They never ran these tests through to a ground landing on the wing, though - they only had the one boilerplate, and didn't want to lose it by trying to land it on the paraglider without a crew inside. In each case, they dropped the boilerplate Gemini from a transport aircraft, let it drop on its drogue chute and then deployed the paraglider. Again IIRC (and I checked this a few months ago for a different discussion), NAA did demonstrate a full deployment at terminal velocity at least three times before the whole paraglider effort was terminated. North American Aviation (before it was bought out by Rockwell) had the contract to develop paraglider. So, the deployments were all definitely subsonic, at the terminal velocity of the capsule-drogue combination. The paraglider wasn't deployed until the craft reached something like 10,000 feet or so at the lowest - and may have been planned to deploy even lower. IIRC, the paraglider was deployed after the Gemini, stabilized with a drogue chute, reached terminal velocity. ![]()
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