plan form




Parachutes are normally used to slow the descent of a person or object to Earth or another celestial body within an atmosphere. Drogue parachutes are also sometimes used to aid horizontal deceleration of a vehicle (a fixed-wing aircraft, or a drag racer), or to provide stability (tandem free-fall, or space shuttle after touchdown). The word "parachute" comes from a French word with a Latin prefix: "para", meaning "against" or "counter" in Latin, and "chute", the French word for "fall". Therefore "parachute" actually means "against the fall". Many modern parachutes are classified as semi-rigid wings, which are quite maneuverable, and can facilitate a controlled descent similar to that of a glider. But older style parachutes were little more than cloth and sticks. The design has changed considerably over the years from roughly cut shapes to aerodynamic ram parachutes. Folding a parachute requires a high degree of skill, and an improperly folded parachute will not deploy, which could end up with deadly results.

Parachutes were once made from silk but now they are almost always constructed from more durable woven nylon fabric, sometimes coated with silicone to improve performance and consistency over time. Eventually parachutes need to be replaced as they deteriorate, as failure to do so could result in loss of life.

When square (also called ram-air) parachutes were introduced, manufacturers switched to low-stretch materials like Dacron or zero-stretch materials like Spectra, Kevlar, Vectran and high-modulus aramids.

Early forms

Chinese texts describe a parachute well over 1500 years ago.

In 9th century Al-Andalus, Abbas Ibn Firnas (Armen Firnas) developed a primitive form of parachute. John H. Lienhard described it in The Engines of Our Ingenuity as "a huge winglike cloak to break his fall" when he "decided to fly off a tower in Cordova".

A conical parachute appears for the first time in the 1470s in an Italian manuscript, slightly preceding Leonardo da Vinci's conical parachute designs. It was intended as an escape device to allow people to jump from burning buildings, but there is no evidence that it was actually ever used. Leonardo da Vinci sketched a parachute while he was living in Milan around 1480-1483: a pyramid-shaped canopy held open by a square wooden frame.

The first implemented parachute was created in 1595 by the Croatian inventor Faust Vrančić, who named it Homo Volans (Flying Man). Twenty years later, he implemented his design and tested the parachute by jumping from a tower in Venice in 1617. The event was documented some 30 years after it happened in a book written by John Wilkins, the secretary of the Royal Society in London.

Modern parachutes

The modern parachute was invented in the late 18th century by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand in France, who made the first recorded public jump in 1783. Lenormand also sketched it beforehand. Two years later, Jean-Pierre Blanchard demonstrated it as a means of safely disembarking from a hot air balloon. While Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dog as the passenger, he later had the opportunity to try it himself in 1793 when his hot air balloon ruptured and he used a parachute to escape.

Subsequent development of the parachute focused on it becoming more compact. While the early parachutes were made of linen stretched over a wooden frame, in the late 1790s, Blanchard began making parachutes from folded silk, taking advantage of silk's strength and light weight. In 1797, André Garnerin made the first jump using such a parachute. Garnerin also invented the vented parachute, which improved the stability of the fall. In 1911, Gleb Kotelnikov invented the first knapsack parachute, later popularized by Paul Letteman and Kathchen Paulus.

At San Francisco in 1885, Thomas Scott Baldwin was the first person in the United States to descend from a balloon in a parachute. In 1911 Grant Morton made the first parachute jump from an airplane, in a Wright Model B, at Venice Beach, California. The pilot of the plane was Phil Parmalee. Morton's parachute was of the 'throw-out' type whereas he held the chute in his arms as he left the aircraft. On 1 March 1912, US Army Captain Albert Berry made the first parachute jump from a moving aircraft over Missouri using a 'pack' style chute. This is the style of chute that became en reg with the actual chute being stored or housed in a casing on the jumper's body. Štefan Banič from Slovakia invented the first actively used parachute, patenting it in 1913. On 21 June 1913 Georgia Broadwick became the first woman to parachute jump from a moving aircraft over Los Angeles.

The first military use for the parachute was for use by artillery spotters on tethered observation balloons in World War I. These were tempting targets for enemy fighter aircraft, though difficult to destroy, due to their heavy antiaircraft defenses. Because they were difficult to escape from, and dangerous when on fire due to their hydrogen inflation, observers would abandon them and descend by parachute as soon as enemy aircraft were seen. The ground crew would then attempt to retrieve and deflate the balloon as quickly as possible. No parachutes were issued to Allied "heavier-than-air" aircrew. As a result, a pilot's only options were to ride his machine into the ground, jump from several thousand feet, or commit suicide using a standard-issued revolver (though the last two cases were only commonly practised by those who did not wish to die by burning). In the UK, Everard Calthrop, a railway engineer, and breeder of Arab horses, invented and marketed through his Aerial Patents Company a "British Parachute". Thomas Orde-Lees, known as the Mad Major, demonstrated that parachutes could be used successfully from a low height (he jumped from the Tower Bridge in London) which led to their being used by the Royal Flying Corps.

The German air service, in 1918, became the world's first to introduce a standard parachute and the only one at the time. Despite Germany issuing their pilots with parachutes, their efficiency was relatively poor. As a result, many pilots died whilst using them, including aces such as Oberleutnant Erich Lowenhardt (who fell from after being accidentally rammed by a friendly) and Fritz Rumey (he tested it in 1918, only to have it fail from a little over 3,000 ft).

Tethered parachutes were initially tried but caused problems when the aircraft was spinning. In 1919 Leslie Irvin invented and successfully tested a parachute that the pilot could deploy when clear of the aircraft. He became the first person to make a premeditated free-fall parachute jump from an airplane .

An early brochure of the Irvin Air Chute Company credits William O'Connor 24 August 1920 at McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio as the first person to be saved by an Irvin parachute. Another life-saving jump was made at McCook Field by test pilot Lt. Harold H. Harris on Oct 20 1922. Shortly after Harris' jump two Dayton newspaper reporters suggested the creation of the Caterpillar Club for successful parachute jumps from disabled aircraft. Beginning with Italy in 1927, several countries experimented with using parachutes to drop soldiers behind enemy lines, and by World War II large airborne forces were trained and used in surprise attacks, as in the 1941 Battle of Crete. Aircraft crew were routinely equipped with parachutes for emergencies as well.


A parachute is made from thin, lightweight fabric, support tapes and suspension lines. The lines are usually gathered through cloth loops or metal connector links at the ends of several strong straps called risers. The risers in turn are attached to the harness containing the load. As the thin material inflates it increases drag and in turn slowing down the object it is carrying. The parachute successfully slows down the object enough so that it does not break on impact with the ground.

Types of parachutes

Round types


The first round parachutes were simple, flat circulars. Because these early parachutes suffered from instability, most military round parachutes adopted conical (i.e. cone-shaped) or parabolic (a flat circular canopy with an extended skirt) shapes, such as the US Army T-10 static-line parachute.

Round parachutes come in steerable or non-steerable varieties. Steering can be achieved using "T-U cuts" which allow air to escape from the back of the canopy, providing limited forward speed; some of these cuts are adjustable for turning. This gives the jumpers the ability to steer the parachute, enabling them to avoid obstacles and to turn into the wind to minimize horizontal speed at landing.

Cruciform (square) types

The unique design characteristics of cruciform parachutes reduces oscillations and violent turns(swinging back and forth) during descent. This technology will be used by the US Army as it replaces its current T-10 parachutes under a program called ATPS (Advanced Tactical Parachute System). The ATPS canopy is a highly modified version of a cross/ cruciform platform and is square in appearance. The ATPS (T-11) system will reduce the rate of descent by 30 percent from to . The T-11 is designed to have an average rate of descent 14% slower than the T-10D thus resulting in lower landing injury rates for jumpers. The decline in rate of descent will reduce the impact energy by almost 25% to lessen the potential for injury.

Annular and pull-down apex types

A variation on the round parachute is the pull down apex parachute—invented by a Frenchman named LeMogne—referred to as a Para-Commander-type canopy in some circles, after the first model of the type. It is a round parachute, but with suspension lines to the canopy apex that applies load there and pulls the apex closer to the load, distorting the round shape into a somewhat flattened or lenticular shape.

Often these designs have the fabric removed from the apex to open a hole through which air can exit, giving the canopy an annular geometry. They also have decreased horizontal drag due to their flatter shape, and when combined with rear-facing vents, can have considerable forward speed around 10 mph (15 km/h).

Ribbon and ring types


Ram-air types


Personnel parachutes





Paratroopers' main parachutes are usually deployed by static lines that release the parachute, yet retain the deployment bag that contains the parachute—without relying on a pilot chute for deployment. In this configuration the deployment bag is known as a direct-bag system, in which the deployment is rapid, consistent, and reliable. This kind of deployment is also used by student skydivers going through a static line progression, a kind of student program.

Varieties of personal ram-airs










General characteristics of ram-airs




For example, one method of reducing the air-resistance of a reserves slider is to make it of open-mesh fabric.





Parachute malfunctions


A "Mae West" is a type of round parachute malfunction which contorts the shape of the canopy into the appearance of a brassiere, presumably one suitable for a woman of Mae West's proportions.

"Squidding" occurs when a parachute fails to inflate properly and its sides are forced inside the canopy. This kind of malfunction occurred during parachute testing for the Mars Exploration Rover.

A "cigarette roll" occurs when a parachute deploys fully from the bag but fails to open. The parachute then appears as a vertical column of cloth (in the general shape of a cigarette), providing the jumper with very little drag. It is caused when one skirt of the canopy, instead of expanding outward, is blown against the opposite skirt. The column of nylon fabric, buffeted by the wind, rapidly heats from the friction of the nylon rubbing against nylon and can melt the fabric and fuse it together, preventing any hope of the canopy opening.



On 16 August 1960 Joseph Kittinger, in the Excelsior III test jump, set the current world record for the highest parachute jump. He jumped from a balloon at altitude of (which was also a manned balloon altitude record at the time). A small stabilizer chute deployed successfully and Kittinger fell for 4 minutes and 36 seconds,, also setting a still-standing world record for the longest parachute free-fall, if falling with a stabilizer chute is counted as free-fall. At an altitude of , Kittinger opened his main chute and landed safely in the New Mexico desert. The whole descent took 13 minutes and 45 seconds. During the descent, Kittinger experienced temperatures as low as . In the free-fall stage, he reached a top speed of 614 mph (988 km/h or 274 m/s).



External links

See also

Search another word or see plan formon Dictionary | Thesaurus |Spanish
Copyright © 2014, LLC. All rights reserved.
  • Please Login or Sign Up to use the Recent Searches feature