Parachute opening height?

[strider3]

Does anyone know at what altitude (in meters) the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules would deploy chutes after re-entry?

[kerbiloid]

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/parachute-ringsail-mercury

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This is an unflown ringsail (main) parachute from the Mercury program. Approximately 63 feet in diameter when deployed, it is made mostly of nylon. After deployment of a drogue parachute, the ringsail parachute deployed at an altitude of about 10,000 feet to help slow the capsule before it landed on the ocean.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19660020968.pdf

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The Gemini landing system uses an 84. 2-foot-Do (nominal canopy diameter) ringsail parachute for terminal descent, and the landing shock is attenuated by entry into water on the corner of the heat shield. A 2 1/2-year development and qualification test program resulted in an operational landing system consisting of a high- altitude, conical-ribbon drogue parachute, a ringsail pilot parachute, and the ringsail main landing parachute. The drogue parachute is deployed nominally at 50 000 feet and will stabilize the spacecraft down to 10 600 feet where its next function is to extract the pilot parachute from its mortar can. The two parachutes which are in a tandem arrangement separate the rendezvous and recovery section from the cabin section of the reentry module, thus deploying the main landing parachute. The Gemini landing system has used the design concepts and experience gained from other programs, notably, Project Mercury. The significant new concepts that were proven in the Gemini Program for operational landing of a spacecraft include: (1) the tandem pilot/drogue parachute method of deploying a main landing parachute, and (2) attenuation of the landing shock by positioning the spacecraft, thus eliminating the need for built-in shock absorption equipment.

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2661/what-was-apollo-11s-reentry-speed-at-parachute-deployment

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If you're asking about the deployment of the three main parachutes of C/M-ELS (Apollo Command Module Earth Landing System), then this is simple enough to answer, the pilot chutes are deployed at about 10,000 feet (3.05 km) by a barometric switch, pulling the three main parachutes from their containers. The ELS was designed so the drogue chutes slow the descent down to roughly 200 km/h (124 mi/h) before the pilot chutes pull the main chutes, eventually slowing down the CM to 22 miles per hour (35 km/h) for splashdown and to roughly 24.5 mi/h (39.5 km/h) with only two main chutes properly deployed, as it happened during the Apollo 15 splashdown.

 

[strider3]

Awesome! Thanks Kerbiloid!!!

[Brotoro]

Around pi kilometers.