NASA Paresev - Development

Development

NASA experimented with the flexible Rogallo wing, which they renamed the Parawing, in order to evaluate it as a recovery system for the Gemini space capsules and recovery of used Saturn rocket stages. Under a directive by Paul Bikle, NASA engineer Charles Richards in 1961–1962 designed the collapsible four-tube Rogallo wing used in the Paresev. The Paresev series included wing configurations that were tightly foldable from the nose plate for easy transport, using initially a cloth sail and later one of Dacron.

The Parasev sail and cross-spreader beam format first flown on February 5, 1961 was seen 14 months later in the April 1963 maiden flight of the Mike Burns Skiplane, as he had closely studied NASA literature; Burns later helped make airworthy the ski-kite-glider of Australian John Dickenson that also embodied mechanics of the two-lobe four-beam wing designed earlier by Charles Richards.

The Richard's aluminum-tubed two-lobed Paresev wing configuration evolved to the sharp-nosed, low-sweep standard Rogallos of the 1960s and early 1970s, coupled with variations of the triangle control frame used in hang gliders as far back as the 1900s, if not earlier. Data developed by NASA in the late 1950s fed both the Charles Richards team and a different Ryan Aeronautical team that produced the Fleep. The Fleep used the four-beam two-lobed wing and influenced Barry Hill Palmer, builder and pilot of the first hang glider based on the Rogallo wing. The rigid-tubed Paresev used a cantilevered cross-beam but did not use a kingpost.

Note that the "paraglider" involved in the early 1960s experiments is very different from the sport glider of today used by practitioners of paragliding.