Safety redundancy to protect against possible system failures in new vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft will be critical to getting them certified for use and accepted by customers. Some manufacturers are planning to provide an extra layer of protection in the shape of a ballistic parachute designed to land the aircraft safely on the ground in the event of loss of control. It’s an approach that is already in use with Cirrus’s popular single-engine, fixed-wing aircraft.
When triggered, a firing mechanism launches the ballistic parachute to help it deploy more quickly than a passively activated parachute otherwise would. That’s important for VTOL aircraft, which will spend significant time flying at altitudes and speeds where traditional parachutes may not have time to activate before impact. That consideration is especially important in the hover phase around takeoff and landing, during which there is likely to be little or no momentum to speed deployment.
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