Some pilots wear parachutes when they fly, in case they have to bail out of a malfunctioning aircraft. But what if you wanted the aeroplane itself to bail out?

Unlike parachutes for humans, whole aeroplane parachutes are deployed balistically; they are “fired” out of their containers by solid-fuel rockets, rather than pulled by air resistance.

A vertical launch whole plane parachute mounted on an aeroplane’s roof. The thin black container contains the solid-fuel rocket that will pull the parachute out of the white container.