NASA-Langley film from1963 showing a 1/12 scale Saturn I model dropped from a helicopter, using a Rogallo wing for recovery. Considerable work went into using this system for S-IB recovery, landing on a runway for refurbishment and reflight. The booster would land horizontally on four skids. There’s a good chance it would not have worked, or would have reliably resulted in damaged boosters, but if they’d stuck with it we could have had recoverable boosters generations earlier.
One response to “Parawing Deployment for Saturn I Booster Recovery”
Instead of a wing, how about a similarly deployed LOFTID inflatable heat shield?
Starship ascends, deploys payload, then the inflate.
Lands in the water with the LOFTID as a float.
It is replaced.
No more bloody tiles.