[Stratos Burst] The Parachute

Once the balloon has reached it's burst size somewhere in the stratospheric layer, the payload (in this case a foam cooler with some electronics) will need a parachute to give it a gentle ride back down to the ground. This of course will help keep anything inside from getting banged up, and also keep it from damaging anything that it might happen to fall on. Unless of course it falls on a highway and gets crushed by a car.

Without a parachute handy, I've fallen back on the amateur skills I worked up as a kite-builder and put one together. I once built a stack of 19 diamond kites that was pretty damned impressive to see in the sky. But it was also unstable as hell. Perhaps it was just that the few times I got to launch it was in pretty strong wind. Whatever the reason, it would fly for a good five or ten minutes before taking a hard turn and getting forced to nose the ground. Fortunately it was easy to re-launch, but damn that thing was an armload! So for all that, it never saw much flight time. 

Anyway, you can see here a few of the kites that I have cannibalized from the stack. All of the struts have been pulled out, and I've folded back the bottom tip and secured it with some industrial transfer adhesive that I had laying around to allow for a vent hole when they are sewn together. I have sewn all of the long edges together and attached some high-test kite line to some of the reinforced corners for shroud lines.  All in all it measures about 5.5 ft. in diameter with approximately 8 ft. lines which I have knotted onto a carabiner to clip onto whatever harness I fit to the payload.

Here's another picture of the finished parachute with the shroud lines daisy-chained to keep them from getting tangled and knotted. I have only attached five; it's a very light load, so I'm not too worried, but I do need to test it to make sure it properly breaks the fall.

Cost: $0

Entirely constructed from materials around the house.