"Curiosity Mars "landing" BIGGEST HOAX EVER!!!"

Some "engineer".

Tsiolkovsky, btw.


Geological variety. Lots of different layers exposed there.

OK, this will be my last post on this. I didn't come here to waste time arguing nonsense. I came here to offer some knowledge for those that have the intelligence to learn something from it. Human nature is not perfect, it has some serious flaws. One of the major flaws has been scientifically studied and documented, and that is: Stupid people are generally too stupid to see how stupid they are, therefore, they typically try to represent themselves as being far more intelligent and talented and knowledgeable than they really are, and many in society fall for their nonsense. They deal with reality based on "impressions". Intelligent people, having the intelligence to see their own flaws and shortcomings, are too humble to care much about correcting the flaws and shortcomings in others, seeing much work in life based on the knowledge within themselves, as opposed to the false impressions we can create for others. This tends to create social dynamics where idiots rule in the public places, and those with the wealth and power, easily capitalize on this situation to move their own agendas forward. Some people claim humans are in need of a new Renaissance, and have many high brow schemes as to how this can be accomplished (like the LaRouche crowd), but they fail to understand that most don't care for their Nazi-like creations of a new futuristic ant-hill society. Others think there will be some new revolution where the poor unwashed masses will "overcome" and put the elites back where they belong, never realizing that their own prosperity in life and ability to sustain themselves is completely depenedent upon those elite that they complain about, nevermind the fact that they have nothing worthwhile to replace the designs of the elite other than their fanciful dreams of everyone being nice to each other and providing for each other, so long as they don't have to bother with the work of it. Mostly, people are just content to go thru the motions of whatever is required to get them thru the next day. I honesty believe there will be no peace or contentment on Earth until people re-learn the importance of self-sufficiency and INDEPENDENCE (freedom). So long as people breed themselves into urbanized dependence, there will be controllers, and controllees. Those with wealth, and those that beg. Those with sovereignty, and those that obey. Those that have, and those that have not. Independent landownership is as fair as things will ever get for humanity, but it can't be accomplished when the population is so great that only industrial systems can provide for them, while destroying all the resources someone needs to sustain themselves in a clean environment. Life will be endless bullshit for a long time to come - because not enough can realize that only an independent people (landowners) can live without control and manipulation, and within the abundance of nature, and with respect for all other life, engaging only voluntarily in society beyond their family/land, thus keeping great evils in check, and at the lowest levels, naturally. As long as we create more babies than we can personally provide for INDEPENDENTLY, there is no hope for people in this world. It is the root of all the garbage in every civilization everywhere: making babies to "dump into the system", neglecting personal responsibility for their lives. It forces those "elite" to make use of those "human resources" as best as they can (which results in their accumulation of greater powers), whether anyone likes it or not. It's just the way the cookie crumbles. So, I am not a finger pointer in all the conspiracies that make the world go round, because I think everyone should have their fingers pointing at their own inadequacies.

This hoax is SO EASY TO SEE if you have half a brain and a little common sense. There are no such thing as "air brakes" like you might see in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Things in motion stay in motion. Things tend to stop on Earth, because of friction, but when you are opertating in space and planetary bodies with no atmosphere, there is no friction. If you use energy to get something moving 13,000 miles per hour in space, you are going to need the same amount of energy to go from 13,000mph back to 0. So, whatever energy it required to get Curiosity moving, that energy is going to be needed to bring it to a stop. But Curiosity doesn't have that amount of energy on board. It would need somewhere near the same amount (less the amount of fuel and fuel assemblies required to move that burning fuel out of Earth's gravity) as was put into the rocket that got it to Mars! Curiosity has only 1000lbs of fuel - only 100 gallons! IT'S A FUCKING JOKE. It took WAY MORE than 100 gallons of fuel to get Curiosity 155,000,000 miles to Mars at 13,000mph!

This thread should end with that.

I am sure the video games kids play with today are more complex than anything needed for NASA to play with a stupid rover on "Mars" as they spend years doing a few stupid "experiments" ...

If you throw a rock up into the air, it is going to come down with the same amount of force that you put into the rock to get it up into the air. If you want the rock to hit the ground with 0 force, you are going to need some retro-rockets on the rock with enough fuel to provide the force that you put into throwing the rock.

If you use a rocket and an amount fuel to shoot the rock up into the air, you are going to need the same rocket and amount of fuel to make it land gently (a little less, because you don't need to worry about the weight of fuel you already spent going up).

Anyway ... to the person I was debating - it is clear you don't know much about physics, but you like to pretend that you do, and it is senseless to "argue" with someone that wants to pretend they have knowledge of physics when they don't. So, I will just summarize the essentials for anyone that cares to acquire some understanding of the basic physics that prove this is just another fraud from US, Inc.

--

The only things that differ in this mission between the energy required to get from Earth to 13,000mph in space, and from 13,000mph in space to the surface of Mars, is:

a) we don't need to worry about the mass of fuel and fuel assemblies required to get such fuel and fuel assemblies off Earth, eg, some fuel is required solely to lift fuel that will be burned.

b) although Earth has about 2x the gravity of Mars (and thus, 2x the escape velocity), Mars requires additional energy to land because of the increase in angular velocity as Curiosity decends from orbit, decreasing it's radius).
Yes, it is just like a tether-ball wrapping around a pole. If you disagree, go study physics, and stop trying to pretend you have.

--

The physics can get very complex if we get into too many details, but details are not where the fraud is found. I don't have time to dedicate myself to this topic, but for me, I use these simple, and fairly indisputable facts:

1. It takes about the same amount of energy to get from Earth to space, as it does to get from space to Mars. See above. Curiosity's 100 gallons of fuel IS NOT ENOUGH. Additionally, the "crane" using the fuel is only for near-ground-level operation. Compare to the Titan rocket used to get things going.

2) It would take a parachute 4000-8000x the size men use on Earth for Curiosity to decend to Mars' surface at 21ft/sec, in a free-fall starting from rest, never mind the fact that it is beginning at 13,000+ mph. Curiosity's parachute was not any bigger than what men use on Earth. IT'S A JOKE - THE PARACHUTE'S EFFECT WAS NEGLIGIBLE IN THE VACCUUM OF MARS ATMOSPHERE.

3) Mars' atmosphere is a vaccuum for all practical purposes, anywhere from 60x (at the surface) to 200x (upper atmosphere) less dense than Earth. There is NO WAY Curiosity "slowed down" from 13,000mph to 900mph in the upper atmosphere of Mars due to air friction. Due to the gravitational acceleration of Mars and the "tether-ball effect" increasing angular velocity, if anything, it's speed would INCREASE upon decending in the upper atmosphere. There is simply not enough atmosphere for friction to play any role in slowing down Curiosity compared to other forces.

CONCLUSION: There is NO EVIDENCE OF ANYTHING that could have been used to slow down Curiosity decending from an orbit at 13,000mph. All major forces want to speed it up! And there were no significant opposing forces (no atmospheric friction, small parachute in a vaccuum, 100 gallons of fuel for ground level operations).

Just had a quick flick through this so apologies if already mentioned but everyone here realises that Landover Baptist is a spoof site, yes?

"CONCLUSION: There is NO EVIDENCE OF ANYTHING that could have been used to slow down Curiosity decending from an orbit at 13,000mph. All major forces want to speed it up! And there were no significant opposing forces (no atmospheric friction, small parachute in a vaccuum, 100 gallons of fuel for ground level operations)."

Yep. It's fraud alright.

I don't have time to get into all the details of the stupid Gemini and other "re-entry" missions you mentioned. They were nonsense examples of high-altitude rockets utilizing retro-rockets or other techniques to come back down on a planet with a thick atmosphere, and had nothing to do with high-speed re-entries from outer space.

The only thing I may grant you along those lines are the missions to Venus, where the Soviets dropped something down that lasted for a few minutes, and that only worked:

a) because it was tiny and very light, and
b) because Venus has a very very dense atmosphere.

So NASA has not landed a rover there?

It was work following the seminal paper by Dunning and Kruger that began to explore how this lacuna between perception and ability grows. From my experience, the short form is; "It is probably more complicated than you think it is."

You are going on and on above about how most people (outside of yourself, of course), have failed to think about the energy requirements of a space mission.

You are so CERTAIN that you are on top, and everyone else is on the bottom, it doesn't occur to you to ask if there are people who thought about the energy requirements...then went further.

I have never, in a single post in this thread, hand-waved away the necessity for change of velocity in several places of the mission. Nor the scale of those changes. But I have done something you are not just unwilling, or unable, but apparently unconscious of even the possibility of doing; I have looked at the actual mechanisms and done orders of magnitude calculations on them.

You continue to go on and on about "not enough fuel" when the propellant mass is documented. I even told you what I believe is a good approximation of the ISP. This is a trivial calculation. It is done every day in classrooms and in actual space projects -- and is done as well by amateurs launching model rockets. The numbers work. They've been tested.

The fact that you don't know how to model a system has nothing to do with the fact that other people not only do know how, but are doing it all the time. You think they've failed to see the problem. They know you've failed to see the answer.

Don't believe me. Go on to any science-based board and read the conversations about planned and imagined space missions. And you will find people discussing, at length, the necessary delta-v, the mechanisms of generating that change in velocity, and doing it with numbers.



Incidentally, the Shuttle Orbiter did exactly as the Apollo craft did, and the Soyuz do today. Perhaps you should move entirely away from all these space missions you find suspect and merely look at the Soyuz capsule being used today to ferry people and supplies to and from the ISS.

From what I've seen of your "work" so far, you are going to have to assume the Soyuz is a hoax as well, and therefor the ISS (which, oddly enough, I caught a nice sighting of two days ago) is a hoax as well.

Because the Soyuz does something you either have never heard of, or flatly rejected as impossible without ever attempting to model if it actually was.




It's clear you can't read.

I've been studying how spacecraft do these kinds of tricks for at least fifteen years. And that means accounting for everything -- all the mass, all the velocity, all the change of gravitational potential.


Oh, and you are making another beginner's mistake. In multiple places, but I chose to point it out here. No real rocket will ever require the same energy to land as it took to take off. Not even for a fifteen-foot hop off the surface. Because rocketry requires throwing mass, and when you expend propellant, the mass of the system goes down.

In the case of Curiosity, the difference is even more marked; the Atlas/Centaur launch vehicle never went to Mars. What landed was a mere fraction of the mass of what took off. The velocity (ideally) would be the same, but since the mass is less, the energy is less.


(If you are interested, the three major delta-V requirements for a minimum-energy transfer are Earth surface to escape, Earth-distance solar orbit to Mars-distance solar orbit, and Mars "infinity" to Mars landing. All but the last have to be solved with propellant mass.)



Make up your mind. First you point out the reality; energy in is energy out. Get into a gravity well, get out of the gravity well, the energy is the same.

Now you are trying to make up new fantasy energy just to continue your previous belief.

Nope. You've never studied physics. You've not even studied mechanics. You couldn't get TORQUE right with that sort of sloppy thinking.

Hey, sorry for being blunt, but that's what engineering does. The final grade is assigned by the universe, and the universe doesn't grade on a curve. If you coddle a stupid bit of engineering, those mistakes will come back and cost money or even lives.








I showed the work. At the velocity domain in which the parachute operates, it is entirely capable of developing the required drag. Atmospheric pressure is linear, as is area (roughly!) but drag is per SQUARE of the velocity. And the Curiosity profile has a final parachute descent velocity over ten times what I experienced as a paratrooper.

I also showed you how to calculate the final phase.

The first phase is more difficult to model. We know it isn't impossible, however, because the same effect takes satellites down all the time. It can't be waved away as being too small to use.

This from a man that lives on an island and screws sheep.

I think 'Engineer' deserves an Honorary IDW Award for the Most Verbose Display of Self-Delusion.

The media highlighting of slamming the sky crane, back shell, heat and shield in to the the a planet's surface, scaring it dark, seems to accepted but isn't there a responsibility for that as humans? As much as there it is documented, there's no plan to clean it up also. What's stopping the next mission from being a sophicitifacted future ground cluster grenade designed in disguise by the military?

As consumers, we should be getting faster rovers and high res video

Just because a baby spider can fly thru the air on a string of cobweb, that doesn't mean 7500lb Curiosity can land on Mars with 10 million strings of cobweb.

Some things just don't scale well.

One small step for man, one giant leap of imagination!

Aw, he's not up to that level yet. He hasn't used any profanity and he hasn't used the J-word yet. He showed he could multiply and divide, and he even spelled most of his words correctly.

I'd be happy to see him at the BAUT (or whatever they call it now.) Not that he'd last long.

"What the consumer wants" and "environmentally friendly" seem antithetical to me.

[link to heiwaco.tripod.com]

So...this all automated?
Its a frigging meteor.....there's hardly any atmosphere density taking off velocity.
Then the super drag chute kicks open,
One wonders how,...seeing that the disturbance flow stream off the heat shield would probably keep the chute compressed and then it would just twirl.
The critical window of time it needs to open would pass.
and how does this heat shield kick out...seeing that its got force against it.
I know they will say explosive whatever,....seems that the possibility of the heat shield kicking off would tumble this pod....
heck...there's how many separation sequences here where its all to damn easy via a dia/ or CGI spin cycle to convey ease/success.

If at any point of the meteors magical braking dance,...it tumbles,wobbles,is shifted in axis....all other separation sequences are then in jeopardy.
Does this thing have some mini super cray making millisec gyro adjust with thrusters?

Just how much fantasy are we expected to buy here?
How does NASA/JPL know the rocket thrusters fire in co-ordinated bursts or sequence?
that first bark of those engines could tumble the pod.

I'm just not seeing time in the descent phase which lends to control....420 sec's....every separation must be near flawless and create no wobble or tumble.
again....where's the atmosphere density to enable this velocity reduction?
its like the Pentalawn and the fact that the engine nacels have to hit the lawn in order for the offical story to disappear thru the first 20ft hole in the wall.
what...no engine nacel dig marks on the Pentalawn?
conclusion....no f'ng airliner hit the building.
The above dia ..the critical separation moments and time,
= non believable story.
neither heat shield nor chute can slow this thing for the feeble engines to give control for the cable nonsense landing.

True enough. Not everything scales linearly. Take drag, for instance; the mechanical drag of an automobile on the road may scale linearly with speed, but (within a first approximation), the drag of air scales at the square of the velocity.

Square-cube gets you every time. Take a look for the great little lecture by J.B. Haldeman on "Being the Right Size." He lays out the basics of why giant insects are impossible, an elephant has tree-trunk legs and wrinkled skin, and why you can't kill an ant by dropping it.

Thing is, slowing something of the rough mass and velocity of the rover is done all the time. What the last Mars landing did is within a magnitude of what paratroops and drag racers do.

We're not talking the kind of scale change that change the game -- like being the spider you mentioned, who experiences air as a fluid, van der waals as a major force, gravity as a third-order force and surface tension as a deadly enemy.

And I shouldn't have to keep reminding of the actual role of the parachute. It slowed the spacecraft by a few hundred meters per second, and the final velocity when the parachute was separated was in excess of 200 MPH.

This isn't some spacecraft floating gently to the ground under a spread canopy. This is a hurtling spacecraft being slowed at 15G over a brief minute or two before the retro-rockets take over.

the Venusian's, sons of god,who patrol the universe..they picky with whom and what gets off this rock..

We've been doing fly-by-wire for over a decade. The most modern fighter aircraft are dynamically unstable; they would literally tear themselves apart in the air if they weren't under real-time computer control.

But, oddly, you don't need that much speed. There is a hobby project called the Arducopter that runs from four to eight direct-drive rotors. ALL of the flight control is done by varying the speed of the rotors. The craft is autonomous, can fly multiple waypoints, stabilize itself in wind...I've seen one, in fact (flying indoors!) get whacked by the builder and it stabilized within under a second.

And that's on a CPU running at 16MHz! (and with a whopping 32K of program memory, too!)

Yes -- the Mars lander has a full RCS system (just as many other spacecraft have), and a few new wrinkles as well. It is just as capable of stabilizing itself following separation as an F18 is capable of flying straight after pulling free from a mid-air refueling.

[link to www.pcprg.com]

This is by a professor at the school I got my Aeronatics degree. I would give my previous assessment on the topic a "B", because it is good enough to think about things off the top of my head. To raise it up to an "A" for accuracy, I would want to play with some parachute decent equations, and see what kind of numbers I come up with for various parachute drag coefficients, and air densities. I read a PDF at NASA, and see they have been studying parachute tests done a long time ago, and that much showed me that the materials used in a parachute have neglible effect on drag. If the holes in the knit are close enough to be "fabric", they don't change drag coefficients.

I don't know this professor, but maybe the school got a grant from NASA to study these things :) hehe. They didn't have a parachute research group when I studied there :)

Calculating the descent rate of a round paracutes

By Dr. Jean Potvin

Parks College Parachute Research Group

How to calculate the descent speed of a round parachute: For most of its trajectory, the descent speed (velocity or V) of a round parachute has a near-constant value which can be computed from:

V = sqrt(2W/(rho C S)

This formula is a consequence of the fact that during its descent, the parachute's own drag is balanced by the combined weight of the parachute and its load. The parameters appearing in the formula are as follows:

[edit]
CD = parachute drag coefficient
0.75 for a parachute without holes or slits
0.50 without holes or slits [my guess for now]

rho = air density near sea level
0.00237 sl/ft^3 (English units)
1.225 Kg/m^3 (Metric)

near 4000 ft or 1219 m above sea level
0.00211 sl/ft^3 (English units)
1.07 Kg/m^3 (Metric)

Weight of the parachute + load
pounds (English)
Newtons (Metric)

V = vertical descent velocity
ft/sec (English)
m/sec (Metric)

S = the total surface area of the fabric
used to build the parachute, plus the areas
of the holes and vents cut in the fabric if present.
square feet (English)
suare meters (Metric)

This definition is such that when vents are cut
in the fabric, the value of S remains the same
but the value of CD becomes smaller.

Nominal diameter versus constructed diameter:

Note that the parachute will be characterized by what
parachute engineers call nominal diameter (or D),
a number computed from this formula:

D = 2 * sqrt(S/pi)

Engineers also use the notion of constructed diameter, a number that is calculated from the measurement of the canopy's actual radius when holding it up by the apex. Here the radius is the distance between the apex and the canopy skirt (or "hem", where the suspension lines are attached). The constructed diameter is then twice the value of that radius. The values of the nominal diameter and the constructed diameter will be the same only when the parachute is built out of a flat circle of fabric.

Alternate designs

Most parachutes used in aerospace today are not based on flat circles but rather on shallow cones, bulged hemispheres or other non-flat surfaces. It turns out that these designs optimize the value of the drag coefficient CD for pretty much the same amount of fabric as that of flat canopies. But these parachutes are much more complicated to build and moreover the constructed diameter and the nominal diameter are not equal.
Parachute stability and venting

Usually parachutes will swing wildly because of the air spilling from alternating sides of the canopy. This swinging can be reduced by cutting a hole at the parachute's apex, or altogether eliminated by cutting a large number of holes all over the canopy. But remember that adding vents will increase the descent speed. In the case of apex venting, the area of the apex hole should be about 1 to 10 percent of the parachute's flat surface area, depending of the desired trade-off between a slower descent speed and improved stability. Remember, the larger the hole, the faster the descent speed, since the value of the drag coefficient CD will decrease in the process.

[clip]

I don't have time to play with this for now, but wouldn't it be interesting to see what kind of numbers come out of it :)

That would really show us if NASA had any possibility of anything other than a crash landing into oblivion in the use of a 50ft parachute to stop a 7500lb shooting star traveling 13,000mph into Mars non-existant atmoshere with a near-zero density :)

MAYBE I AM WRONG! WE WILL SEE SOON!

If I am wrong, I will be excited to think of
the possibilities of my new knowledge, and you
will be "ho-hum". And if I was correct in my
initial assessment, I will be excited again
because I basically proved 100% what a fraud
NASA is, and you will be too afraid to
acknowledge it. So, we will see soon
when I have time to play around :)

Engineer 694654 you have cleary won hands down!!! those other stooges just talk about nothing, no number just rubbish well done mate..

this should be pinned engineer has put some very good info that cannot be rebutted. they tried but failed..

pin pin pin...

Nicely found.

The above calculation solves for final velocity of the system, not thrust -- you can't use it to tell you anything about anything other than an equilibrium state. But since that state is sub-sonic, you can most definitely calculate it.

Just make sure to use the actual Martian atmospheric pressure, and the actual constructed diameter of the 50 meter LONG, vented, parachute.

The above won't tell you anything, of course, about the behavior of the drogue in the supersonic regime. But then, you still have this absurd idea that it is being deployed at orbital velocities and altitudes, so you'd get the wrong answer anyhow.

To calculate THAT part of the re-entry, you might want something like the linked document:

[link to docs.google.com (secure)]

No numbers?

Read my posts. "Engineer" put down some numbers (which at least allows one to numerically define his assumptions). I put down CALCULATIONS -- I showed how I derived my numbers.

"Engineer" hasn't replied to that. Or used the information I showed him to in any calculation of his own. He merely jumps from the assumption to an assumed answer.

He might as well just say "42!" Because without showing how he derived it, it is just a number -- not a finding.

where are the test on the shute and sky crane info you assume?

I think really the shadowy military industrial complex darpa thingy is so advanced they have teleporters that can put you right on mars surface and they just fuck with us about using rockets and parachutes. Instead they just teleport the rover there.

OK, I will admit some surprise with this parachute formula. I did read of supersonic parachute tests, it seems that some have been developed that can withstand that shock - though they all got rips/tears in the tests, they remained usable. That was a little mind-boggling to me - I'd like to see one of those parachutes sometime! It's very difficult to imagine a parachute withstanding that kind of stress. And I did study various drag coefficients of various objects and various parachutes, and have some idea of those. Generally, .75 is a good number, .33 for very porous material, and up to .8 or so at the high end for some NASA tests, and 1.5 for a flat solid plate. It doesn't make too much difference just to get a ballpark idea.

The basic equation I used is:

V = sqrt(2*W/(.00237*.75*3.1416*17.5^2))

This would be for a T10 parachute used by
the military to jump out of cargo planes.
W = weight in pounds, V = velocity in ft/s.

0.00237 is air density in slugs/ft^3 at sea level.
.75 is the drag coefficient.
Pi x radius ^ 2 = circular area.

T10 parachute has a nominal diameter of 35ft,
thus, 17.5ft radius.

So, I played around with that just to make sure
the formula is working correctly, because I am
not watching the units by punching numbers into
a calculator.

So, for 200lb man on Earth getting dropped out of
an airplane from a few thousand feet, we would have:

sqrt(2*200/(.00237*.75*3.1416*17.5^2)
= 15.3 ft/s

So, now Mars. How fast will a man on Mars drop from
a plane at a few thousand feet? I will just figure
1% air density first, and say the man is now
100lbs on Mars, though Mars gravity is .38 of Earth
and not 1/2 = .50

sqrt(2*100/(.0000237*.75*3.1416*17.5^2))
= 108.3 ft/s

So, this was very surprising to me. It's not as
proportional to air density as I would have thought.
1% of the air density only increases the velocity 7x?
Gosh, that is a little difficult to imagine!
Chemically, or molecularly, I can't see this.
1% of the molecules and only 7x increase in
free-fall speed?

What if the man was 200lbs even on Mars?

sqrt(2*200/(.0000237*.75*3.1416*17.5^2))
= 153.3 ft/s

Double the weight, but only 50% faster ... Hmmm.

OK, I can favor NASA more than before because of this.
If I am doing this calculation correctly. Neither weight
nor extremely low air density is having much of an effect!

What if the parachute it 25ft wide, instead of 35?

sqrt(2*100/(.0000237*.75*3.1416*12.5^2))
= 151.7

Damn, cut the surface area in half, and
again, only 50% faster ... Hmmm. So, surface
area is directly inversely proportional.
50% less surface area = 50% faster velocity.

OK, now for the Curiosity ...

7500lbs - is that on Earth, or Mars?
Assuming that is Earth weight ...
50ft diameter parachute ...
I will remove the "2" in "2 x Weight"
to account for Mars gravity of 1/2 Earth.

sqrt(7500/(.0000237*.75*3.1416*25^2))
= 464.572209 ft/s.

Hmmm. Let's use more realistic air density
from my previous post:

Mars Atmospheric Pressure = 0.097 pounds/sq in
Earth atmospheric pressure = 14.7 pounds/sq in

sqrt(7500/(.000015*.75*3.1416*25^2))
= 594.088525 ft/s

How many miles per hour is that?

405mph ... Still below terminal velocity on Mars
(about 585 mph or so ...)

Hmmm. OK, I can lean a little more toward NASA now,
but still, Curiosity, even if dropped from a plane
at a few thousand feet, is coming down to the Mars
surface at 100's of miles/hour, 100's of feet/sec.

I *really* want to know how the Curiosity unit
slowed down in the upper atmosphere from 13,000mph
to 900mph ... and I guess I can use the same equation
to make some guess-timates so long as I use an
appropriate drag coefficient, and so long as
I can find date on the density at different
altitudes on Mars.

But that will have to wait for another day!
I am not sure I buy all of this yet!

I can't imagine those other 2 preceeding rovers
crashed into Mars at 500+ mph, and saved themselves
with "air bags" ... But I hope I made things clear
enough for people to follow and play around with
their own numbers.

Don't forget that re-entry vehicles are blunt lifting bodies.

Found a video from 2005.


[link to www.youtube.com]


Last Edited by Halcyon Dayz, FCD on 08/12/2012 06:00 AM

Before I go to bed:

I wanted to see how big of a parachute would be required for Curiosity to land on Mars as hard as a man on Earth using a T10 parachute (approx 16 ft/s) ...

sqrt(7500/(.000015*.75*3.1416*1000^2))
= 14.852213 ft/s

SO ... even though my previous thinking was that decreasing air density would be much more proportional to increasing velocity, it still turns out that Curiosity would need a parachute 2000ft wide (almost half a mile wide) to land at 15 ft/s! Just to keep things in perspective!

(about 10 miles per hour) ...