Back in the days catching a harsh turbulence meant deploying your reserve chute, if you where lucky enough to have one. Another aspect is safety: Today's entry-level paraglider can sort out all but the most severe disturbances without human intervention, thanks to extensive simulation. Today we can actually fly with glide ratios of 8:1 and up, but those where only possible with extensive computer simulations. They used to have glide ratios of 2:1 which allowed steering away from steeper mountains, but that's it. Paraglider started as a high-risk equipment back in the 80s.
If you build a paraglider with classic materials, it will be too heavy to fly and way too prone to collapse mid-air. The glider must be almost impenetrable for pressurized air, which is impossible with cotton. You cannot build today's paragliders without modern materials The ropes need to withstand several kN of force while keeping diameter to a minimum to reduce drag. For a time both the parawing and the biconical delta (the latter patented by others back in 19, and as a kite just a year before the Rogallos' unrelated patent) were known as "Rogallo wings". I am not sure who first invented the parawing, but Francis Rogallo subsequently adopted the technology in his day job, designing lightweight spacecraft recovery systems, and went on to popularise it along with other kite-derived flexible wing forms. The control system was key to making it work. Meanwhile, early attempts at parachutes were uncontrollable and swung wildly, sometimes fatally.īut even kites still had rigid sticks to hold their shape, the idea of a wholly non-rigid aircraft, shaped by the airflow, seems not to have appeared until kiting enthusiasts Francis and Gertrude Rogallo came up with it shortly after WWII. That did not change until in the first part of the 19th century Sir George Cayley defined control as a specific problem to be solved, and that would take almost a hundred years more. Nobody even understood the problem of control, never mind solved it, and both were often fatal, birdman wings especially.
Ancient manned flights used either "birdman" wings or kites.
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