A wind-tunnel investigation has been conducted to study the possibility of inflating balloon and cone devices to give the same drag and stability characteristics as their solid counterparts over the Mach number range from 2.00 to 4.65. The results include some effects of Mach number, tow-cable length, and inlet configurations on the drag and stability of these inflatable decelerators.nBoth the closed pressure-inflatable and self-inflatable (ram-air) decelerator configurations were fully inflated and had approximately the same drag and stability as their solid counterparts. The decelerator exhibits excellent stability in the supersonic wake region. The drag reaches a maximum and has little change with increases in tow-cable length when the decelerator reaches the supersonic wake region.
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