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1- Do you think you know what a parachute looks like? 

2- Guess what: There are tons of parachute types out there, and you probably don’t know ’em all! 

3- Here’s a rundown of several of the normal and not-so-normal types of parachutes… 

3a- …that help skydivers (and far-flung cargo) make their way softly back down to terra firma.

4- Round parachutes were the first tools for fabric descent. 

5- If your mental image of a parachute involves a big, inverted pouch of fabric… 

5a-…suspended over a helpless jumper, then it’s a round parachute you’re thinking of. 

6- Round parachutes served a purpose for a very long time (and still do, in some very specific circumstances)…

7-…but there were a few issues with this design that caused them to eventually fade from regular use. 

Commercial break ! Do you ever wonder what it costs to produce and share a podcast like wadjasay? Let me tell you. Putting my podcasts online so you can listen and download them costs $12 per month for up to 3 hours. If I want to go over 3 hours, It costs more. The software I use for recording and editing costs about $16 per month. So my current cash out-of-pocket expenses total $28 dollars per month. 

Then there’s my time. Each recorded hour of the podcast requires on average two to three hours of time for research, preparation, recording, editing, and uploading the finished podcast. So if I upload three hours of podcasts each month, and pay myself an imaginary $20 per hour, and I’m very efficient so it only takes me 6 hours to make the 3 hours of podcasts, I owe myself $120 per month. So the grand total? I’m investing at least $150 per month in cash and my time to keep wadjasay running.

In the first week after I upload a new podcast, it is usually downloaded between 50 and 100 times. I am recording this on March 16th, and I presently have two monthly subscribers to wadjasay. (Thank you, and thank you!) But what about everyone else? If you take the time to download the podcast, I can only conclude that you find it helpful. If that’s true, please help support it. A few dollars a month would tell me that I’m not wasting my time and that my efforts are worth continuing. 

Thank you! Now back to practicing English.

8- First off: They’re (gulp!) unsteerable. Secondly, they’re (double gulp!) not super-likely to land lightly.

9- Cruciform parachutes can be seen as kinda-sorta a subset of round parachutes. 

10- They’re not round, per se, but they’re certainly not the square modern parachutes we use for most purposes today. 

11- The difference is this: their squared-off profile decreases oscillation 

12- …and ends up resulting in fewer landing injury rates for the jumpers and cargo that dangle helplessly below. 

13- The bump at the end is about 25% softer than the cruciform’s rounder cousin, 

14-…but it’s still nowhere near as good an idea as the modern skydiving parachute, so this one also stays firmly in the military world.

Intro & Outro Music: La Pompe Du Trompe by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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