That’s not to say you couldn’t have an auto deploy mechanism at a given altitude. I haven’t skydived (skydove?) in years, but isn’t there an emergency deployment mechanism if the chute hasn’t deployed by a certain altitude?
There probably is, but that brings in another huge problem. Maintenance of all this stuff, parachutes can’t just stay packed indefinitely. Maintaining 100s of parachutes per plane is wildly impractical.
True, plus the liability. I’d also imagine the optics might be a bit better when you have the plane go kaboom into the ground vs having a number of people go splat in a populated area.
The emergency deployment system is your skydiving instructor grabbing onto you and pulling the cords of your primary (in case it was user error), then secondary (in case the primary failed) and finally just holding on while the instructor deploys their chute.
That’s not to say you couldn’t have an auto deploy mechanism at a given altitude. I haven’t skydived (skydove?) in years, but isn’t there an emergency deployment mechanism if the chute hasn’t deployed by a certain altitude?
Skydiven.
There probably is, but that brings in another huge problem. Maintenance of all this stuff, parachutes can’t just stay packed indefinitely. Maintaining 100s of parachutes per plane is wildly impractical.
True, plus the liability. I’d also imagine the optics might be a bit better when you have the plane go kaboom into the ground vs having a number of people go splat in a populated area.
The emergency deployment system is your skydiving instructor grabbing onto you and pulling the cords of your primary (in case it was user error), then secondary (in case the primary failed) and finally just holding on while the instructor deploys their chute.