A Rogallo wing attached to a Mercury capsule, around 1961. Credit: NASA
Regular readers are doubtless aware that I love the Rogallo paraglider wing. NASA had had no shortage of uses for this triangular, two-lobed sail design in the 1960s. It was the system that should have landed the Gemini spacecraft on a runway (if it had worked), it briefly was considered as the landing system for both Mercury and Apollo, and the U.S. Air Force was interested in the paraglider for its Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. But there were non-piloted applications of this technology as well. In the early 1960s, NASA studied how it might use the Rogallo wing to bring the first stage of a Saturn rocket to a runway landing for refurbishment and relaunch. I’ve given an overview of the Rogallo Saturn recovery system Discovery News.
I guess now a new design would be more likely to use a para-sail based design, as there’s already systems designed for autonomous cargo landings:
http://defense-update.com/features/du-1-07/aerialdelivery3-gps.htm
Saturn stage recovery schemes are mind blowing. My personal favorite a special recovery helicopter.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1045/1