True aerocapture is fine-tuned as far as possible to put the vehicle into something resembling an orbit. I know that this is used by unmanned probes to Mars, has been proposed for a Titan orbiter and has also been proposed by the DIRECT team for their manned Mars misison profile.
I read today Popular mechanics article about Apollo 11. I was surprise about how they slow aircraft on the way back to Earth, it looks like aerocapture.Kraft: .. because velocity was so high 30000 feet/s... we did get them into the atmosphere, skip it out to kill some velocity, and then bring it back again......Description sounds like aerocapture. Is it true I never heard about it.
They extended over 400 miles which must have included up-control and Keppler phases in the trajectory. That is not a skip?
I'm defining skip in terms of the AGC programs. Going directly from P64 to P67 is a non-skip entry. The sequence P64-P65-P66-P67 is a skip entry.Publications from Draper Labs define skip as a lofting where the spacecraft gains altitude, it does not have to leave the atmosphere to be a skip.Both definitions seem to be consistent.Collins said in the debriefing that they went 1500 miles downrange which I interpret to be the low end of a skip entry. He spoke of a roller coaster EMS trace: "It really climbed for altitude after the initial pulse and hung way up there high."So I'm assuming the AGC was in it's skip mode. And that is what contradicts all the people, including Draper Labs, who said the AGC skip mode was never used.So I'm still confused by it all.
Hmm I think aerocapture doesn't make much sense for a capsule atleast not for one with a service module as it is pretty incapabel without it, on the other hand a vehicle like HL-20 could benefit from aerocapture a lot provided this technique can be made reliable enough.I wonder whether an HL-20 could actually perform a lunar return by utilizing skip reentry or even aerocapture...