I am not really sure about what Jerry is talking about, but it seems that we are forgetting a very important detail: that Huygens is not a lander.

When you have to land (e.g. with Pathfinder, Polar Lander, Beagle 2 etc.) you have a very difficult mission since you have to approach the ground within very low velocity limits (a small range of a few m/sec). In addition, after you land you would have to retract airbags, deploy mechanisms (panels, antennas etc.), you need to be in a good orientation and not blocked by a crater wall (this is just luck - cant predict it). In case you don't use airbags, you will have to use a propulsion system which has to work perfectly in technical terms, plus under questionable atmospheric conditions that could affect the stability and the position of the lander. So, you see, a lot of tricky and risky things have to happen. Some might say: Well, is the deployment of a solar panel so tricky? My nephew can built a mechanism like this with his toys!. Actually, most things on a space mission are tricky, so don't underestimate anything. A thousand things could go wrong

On the contrary, Huygens is a very unique, but in the same time very easy mission compared to the mission of a lander. Huygens is an atmospheric probe. Which means that all it has to do is deploy parachutes, release the heat shield, turn-on the scientific instruments to gather data and the antenna to transmit them to Cassini.

The deployment of the probe's instruments will occur at 170-190 km, after the heat shield is released (actually, one instrument - HASI - will gather data from 1270 km altitude). After the initiation of the instruments, Huygens will descent for ~1.5 hours and collect data. That is the mission of Huygens.

So if the parachute deployment takes place a few seconds later, no problem. The data collection will last ... 1 hour 29 minutes and 56 seconds...The mission will be succesfull again.

Huygens is supposed to reach the surface with a maximum velocity of 5-6 m/sec. It is designed to survive such an impact, although the landing is not a goal of this mission. If it continues to work, this would just be a bonus that everyone would welcome.

The tricky part of Huygens is that it has three parachute deployments, and the entry and decelaration (since we don't ave a detailed structure of the Titan's atmosphere). However, due to the two flybys of Cassini from Titan, the understanding of the atmosphere is now sufficient and probably verifies the existing models, since there are no major changes in the mission. So, mainly, its up to the parachutes...