Well, I think "close to expectations" means "close to expectations". How could somebody explain this? It is so obvious...

Before or after the higher readings were taken? Obviously after... Since the higher readings were taken at the upper atmosphere and the probe was going down. What kind of questions is this? Does it have a scope?

Close high or close low? Doesn't matter, it was close.

What does deeper mean? Since the Galileo probe entered in the Jovian atmosphere... well, it fell... And when you fall you go deeper into the atmosphere. Come on...

If the knowledge about gravity was wrong, Cassini would have probably not been in Saturn right now...

No, it could not mean stronger gravity. The answer is just above. We know how gravity works and therefore if we eliminate the known effect of gravity on the probe's trajectory, we can attribute the rest to winds. That's all.

So what? Do you think that we have perfect understanding of the Martian atmosphere with just a few landing attempts? How do you expect scientist to have perfect knowledge on density and temperature profiles etc. about an atmosphere that has barely been studied? And on top of that, how do you expect them to understand the variabilllity of an atmosphere? You think is easy? NO! You think an atmospheric state is easily predictable? NO! You think that atmospheric densities are definded just by gravity? NO! What about winds, temperatures, latitude, topography, any other type of event that could disturb the atmosphere locally (dust storms)?

There are hundreds of reasons that an atmospheric state cannot be predicted. Especially for landers, where the accuracy in velocity has to be less (or not much more) than 1 m/sec during landing, those differences are much more important, but even more difficult to avoid. Maybe it is impossible. That is why the best thing that can be done, together with some good atmospheric physics, is a lot of statistics, so that margins on density profiles (that are the most important for landers), can be defined. In this case the necessary margins will be applied in mission design.

Now, I am not really sure whether any of these margins were available for the Russian landers (although you forget ot mention that Mars 3 landed within a dust storm), Viking, Pathfinder etc. Maybe they were available for Beagle, but you might know that Beagle had the worst mission design ever.

Plus, also don't forget that landers, orbiters etc are complex devices and they are required to perform difficult missions. There are numerous reasons that for example Polar Lander could have failed (it was so small, that even if everything went well, it could have tripped over if it landed on a small rock). As for the early Russian Mars landers & orbiters, if you see the technology they used, you might understand what was the probable cause of failure...

You don't just fall when you are about to land. You also fall when you are in orbit. So according to you, both Cassini and Huygens, which have identical orbits currently, are in the wrong trajectory, since Saturn is also in the distant solar system... So, you are wrong. Because Cassini and Huygens are just where they supposed to be.

It was not expected, but it was not impossible. The pioneer probes were not just a thin piece of metal. Plus let me also remind you that Galileo worked for many more more years than expected, the MER rovers have worked for almost a year (not expected), the Cassini is already expected to have a 4 year extended mission, the Laser Reflectors on the Moon left by astronauts were designed for 10-year life, but they are still working, MGS is still working, NEAR landed on the asteroid while it was just an orbiter ,etc etc. In mission design, they are never optimistic. They always require a more than 90% propability that a mission will work. If they tell them "Well, the MER rovers have an 80% probability to survive more than one year", they wont make the 1-year survivability a goal of this mission (although the chances are good). Space missions deal with hundreds of millions of dollars/euros, and project managers and space agencies cannot give promises that are not almost sure that they could come true...

Well, air braking at Venus was done with Magellan at the end of the mission, as a technology/new technique demostration. It was not mission critical, as it was with MGS. If it was mission critical, they would have been much more concerned about the Maggellan instrument and system readings.

Plus, if you once say that densities on Mars are less than expected due to wrong understanding of gravity, and then you attribute the heating problems to this bad understanding, you are probably in a big confusion. Because lower densities would not cause unexpected heating problems. Only higher densities...

We don't have to wait for Huygens to see if Jerry is right or wrong. He is wrong. Physical laws apply everywhere and not just on a few landers, the Pioneers, or the outer planets. So his ideas should have applied everywhere (even at small scales). And they dont.

And even if Huygens doesn't send any data, this doesn't mean that Jerry was correct. Huygens is a very difficult mission. I know that there is tons of redundancy to make this mission work, but still there are always a lot of unknowns (technical and scientific), each one of these being very critical. Titan is still an unexplored planetary body. Its atmosphere is unique in the solar system.

From a technical point of view Huygens works perfectly. But all testing is based on simulated missions and scenarios. And simulations are just images of our thinking and current knowledge. So, everything should be expected, although I believe Huygens will work. But we have to be realistic. It is not an easy mission

But definately, this there is no danger due to mistaken understanding of gravity...