Recovery Techniques

There are 2 primary techniques for recovering oddrocs.

Tumble recovery. Also referred to as Aerobrake recovery. While traditional rockets using this technique are sometimes called Featherweight recovery, oddrocs can often be much larger & heavier than equivalent traditional rockets. Ultimately, this technique primarily takes advantage of the same high drag design for recovery to bring the rocket down safely as what keeps their altitude and velocities low while during ascent under thrust. Profile can appear to be anything from a wobbling fall (typical of most saucers & tetrahedrons) to rapid end-over-end somersaults (typical of most spools).

Active recovery. AR is the deployment of a recovery device, typically a parachute or streamer, through a change of the rocket's physical configuration. In layman's terms, that means the rocket comes apart in a designed manner to deploy a primary recovery device. While there was some controversy generated by a new requirement from a joint decision of NAR & TRA in June 2006 stating that active recovery techniques must be used on high power rockets, a well designed high drag rocket usually does not require deployment of a parachute or streamer for recovery. Again, with the high drag design in place, active recovery is often considered an unnecessary redundancy for a safe recovery.