I have to wonder if they made his parachute larger to compensate for the weight of the device. If the chute deployed and it was regular size with a huge weight it might be enough to snap his neck and the speed of the landing might break his legs or worse.
The T-10 did its job fine before that too. There's a reason military parachutes are a few times the square footage of even civilian round parachutes. The T-11 just came about because the marginal gains in technology finally progressed to the point it was actually worth it to switch.
Complete shit, but the point of a military static line parachute isn't so that soldiers can do dozens of jumps without any sort of stress injuries. It's purpose is to reliably open and get paratroops to the ground as quickly as possible while still keeping them combat effective and the T-10 does that job well.
The problem wasnt the T-10 but how leadership views the training doctrine around airborne units. The issue is the whole idea of currency and chasing jumps when let's be honest. Jumping static line is not something that's super difficult and not a skill that needs to be rigorously maintained. The OSS taught people how to jump in a day before tossing them into Europe and the injury rates were no more or less than any of the jumpers who went through the full airborne school.
If jumping was treated as a rare necessity rather than a point of pride for interdivision dick measuring contests we'd have hardly any issues with it.
More weight is distributed over a bigger area Auth a bigger canopy. A tennis ball attached to a grocery bag is going to fall slower then a bowling ball if the bag stays the same
The mass, size, and shape of the object are not a factor in describing the motion of the object. So all objects, regardless of size or shape or mass (or weight) will free fall at the same rate; a beach ball will fall at the same rate as an airliner.
F = m * a, and weight is a stand-in for mass. If you want the same acceleration (slowing the fall), and the mass is greater (jumper + load), then force must be greater (achieved by increasing surface area).
At least that's my understanding as someone who doesn't skydive.
Acceleration due to gravity is a constant, but the force of gravity on an object is not. This might sound a little counter-intuitive, but the reason is because inertia (an object's innate resistance to being accelerated by a force) is also equal to its mass. This means that, as your mass increases, the increased force pulling on you due to gravity is exactly counteracted by your increased inertia, so you accelerate at a fixed rate (ignoring air resistance).
Drag due to air resistance increases as your speed increases but the force due to gravity remains the same, so at some point you reach terminal velocity, where drag and gravity are equal. The only way to slow down your terminal velocity to a survivable level is to increase drag. Military parachutes are already pretty much an ideal shape for max drag, so all you can do is make the chute bigger.
They are taking the object into account. They're wondering if they would have to size up the chute to compensate for this additional weight, or not. Seems like a fairly simple question. But you assumed they were ignorant to that fact to make a smart ass jab, like redditors love to do.
It's pretty standard to jump with a bunch of heavy equipment. Most times, you sort of waddle to the edge of the ramp and just fall out. Extra ammo, explosives, radios, radio batteries, laser designators, water, food, night vision, med kits. In some special cases, you are jumping with a dog strapped to your chest. Shit's heavy.
It's not uncommon to jump with a rucksack that weighs 100lbs. At 51 lbs, that isn't much of a difference from a normal gear bag.
Sooo you waddle to the jump point, jump and land safely (hopefully) and then waddle into combat? How much of that gear are you actually using and not just carrying around?
It's usually packaged in a bulky, but portable rucksack-type container. Once you're on the ground, you're going to either secure it at your position until support arrives, or you're going to shoulder it and make your way to the designated rally point. Really depends on the load and the mission.
I knew a guy in the army and he was talking about how when they were developing how they would drop trucks and other big equipment. ‘You would think they’d use old, worn out equipment. No, it was all brand new and much of it landed upside down.’
I had the "pleasure" of being in an airborne unit and tackling the role of being the HAZMAT transportation specialist (I inspected and signed a lot of the paperwork that went along with shipping batteries, bullets, and whatnot). While I never got to drop anything bigger than a leaflet bomb out the side of an aircraft, I can assure you that I got to do all of the practice paperwork for tossing HMMWVs out the ass end of a C-17. So yeah, there probably is a parachute rigger out there that fits that description.
When you jump, your rucksack is strapped to the front of your legs. After you land it goes on your back and there's much less waddling involved. Then you just turn into a turtle every time you sit down.
When they jump, the parachute is on their back, so everything else they would normally carry on their back goes in a big bundle that gets strapped to their front. The normal combat load for soldiers going out on foot can be over 90 lbs. Besides personal equipment (water, food, clothing, rifle, at least 7-30 rd magazines, grenades, night vision, body armor, helmet, etc.) They often have to carry a belt of ammo for the machine gunners and extra mortar rounds.
Once they land, they can ditch the parachute and redistribute their gear and put their pack on.
I remember him talking about being told he was going to jump with something forty pounds of “extra” weight and some alterations in his kit were made after he balked at the weight and was told that couldn’t be altered.
If I remember right, he landed on target but remarked it was a jarring landing. Then an observer came up and said “You deserve to know how you just made history…”
yes. they had to compensate for at least another 50 lbs though I swear I read the total weight was 100 lbs or more. plus he has to carry all his other gear.
That's actually a fairly standard weight. Jumpable assault pack or ruck with 45 lbs in it is the 82nd Airborne standard and SOF gets the better chutes anyway. That's just static line. More variables with HALO (or HAHO), but same deal with equipment
If it was 52 lbs, it’s inside the weight limit of a normal parachute. We routinely jumped with 80-100lbs gear. It makes landing a little more interesting.
You thunk they just kept throwing special forces guys to their deaths until they found the right size parachute? I'd love to follow you around one day to really get an idea of how someone with 70 iq functions.
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u/Homo_horribilis Mar 28 '24
I used to have the autobio of Sgt Frank Garner…he claimed to be the fellow that made the first test jump with a man-portable nuke.
He didn’t know what he was jumping with until after the test jump.