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Pyramid Parachute

Parasol type

Conical parachute

Pack-style parachute

Round parachutes

Square parachutes

Ram-air parachutes

Ribbon/Ring Parachute

In its basic sense, a parachute is neither made for travel and sports, it was created to increase safety while descending from a certain altitude. It is a medium to delay the pull of gravity from earth when deployed form higher altitude.

In short, it makes the dropping of an item, a person or equipment vertically or diagonally slower by reducing the amount of dragging force while maintaining a balance so that the item would remain safe until it reaches the ground. Early physicists have made use of this principle and newer develops in parachuting technology led to the creation of various types of parachutes.

Early types of parachutes

Parasol type – Though not strictly called parachutes, the parasols were commonly used by performers in China to create a slow falling effect onstage.

Conical parachute – Possibly the earliest form of parachute is the conical shaped-parachute which appeared during 1470s in Italy preceding the design conceptualized by Leonardo da Vinci. As an escape device, this type of parachute was intended to allow people to get safely on the ground from burning buildings. However, there are no written records whether this parachute was ever used for that purpose.

Pyramid Parachute – Another design by Leonardo da Vinci, this parachute was conceptualized in Milan during the early part of 1480. It was a canopy that is supported by light wood held by a square bottom frame.

Pack-style parachute – This is the predecessor of all parachutes that are stored in casings these days.

Round parachutes – A basic drag device, round parachute is used in various settings like medical missions, cargo applications and military operations. While being described commonly as round in shape, the parachute actually resembles a dome or a jellyfish. This has been among the most popular type however; present-day parachutists don’t normally use this kind of parachute.

The earliest round parachutes were circulars with flat surfaces that made them unstable, thus causing a number of deaths and injuries on parachutists. To add more stability, military round parachutes were made parabolic or conical in shape.

There are two types of round parachutes- steerable and non-steerable. Like ram-air parachutes, non-steerable parachutes can’t be maneuvered to

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Despite the lack of concrete parachuting statistics, misconceptions still surround both parachuting and skydiving. Many people believe that every year, there are a lot of individuals who die or get injured because of parachuting and they attribute a great number of reasons to these wrong assumptions.

There are only several reasons why parachuting accidents occur including malfunctioning equipment such as a canopy or a reserve canopy that did not open, collisions between jumpers, and difficulties during landing. Malfunctioning equipment is said to have claimed more lives than the other two major causes of accidents. However, operator error is the real culprit for most of the time.

For one, jumpers do not use just one canopy, instead they have a main canopy and second canopy which makes it almost impossible for jumpers to get injured because of malfunctioning equipment . Also, it is usually the problem of lines tangling rather than broken parachutes. On the other hand, difficulty in landing is usually contributed by factors that are often not subject to the control of the jumper.

Usually, accidents due to landing are attributed to poor estimation of how much longer jumpers have to take to perform maneuvers in the air. The third reason is largely due to jumpers deploying their parachutes so closely together.

It is easy for people to believe that novices are involved in more parachuting accidents than experts. But in reality, there are lesser chances that students will get injured or die during jumps. In fact, there are more expert jumpers who die each year in parachuting than students due to the fact that they tend to try higher altitudes which increase the risk of accidents.

According to studies, parachuting is considerably safer when compared with perceived lesser risky sports such as scuba diving or board surfing. In fact the average death due to parachuting is only 30 in every 100,000 jumps while there is a higher rate of 47 deaths in every 1000,000 scuba diving exercises every year. There is a higher rate of death in mountain climbing totaling to 50 deaths in every 100,000 and 67 lives are claimed every year because of hot air ballooning.

Interestingly history proved that parachuting accidents could be deterred even when it seems most impossible. There are so many accounts in the past, particularly in World War I and II, which proved that people jumped and met accidents while airborne and still managed to get through it with minor injuries.