Sierra Space wants to drop cargo from orbit to anywhere on Earth in 90 minutes

[Admin]

Sierra Space has unveiled a new "global payload delivery" system known as Ghost that is designed to drop vital payloads from orbit to anywhere on Earth's surface within 90 minutes.

Sierra Space wants to drop cargo from orbit to anywhere on Earth in 90 minutes : Read more

 

[Dasher]

I wonder if this could also be used as an individual emergency lifeboat for astronauts on the ISS.

 

[ChrisA]

I wonder if this could also be used as an individual emergency lifeboat for astronauts on the ISS.Gargarin

Not ISS but Starship.

Remembr Yuri Gagarin? Of course, he was the first person in space. His "landing" procedure was to bail out of the falling capsule with a parachute. They had not yet perfected a way to soft-land the capsule so he ejected before it crashed to the ground. (Although, it was kind of a soft-crash that he might have survived.)

So yes, your idea could work, the space suit has a self-contained life support and the person rides behind an inflatable heat shield, then deploys a conventional parachute and lands like Yuri. (Yuri's first words after landing was "I have just fallen from space, I need to find a telephone to call Moscow")

NASA would never allow this, It has ridiculously high risk and there is no easy way to train and test.

That said it might be the ONLY way to abort from a SpaceX Starship. As designed, any failure during Starship accent would kill the crew. But perhaps the crew is fitted with individual ejection seats that use this "Ghost" system.