Thread: Huygens Descent
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Old 19-January-2005, 10:46 AM
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Jerry Jerry is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicolas
Just how strong do you think the explosion of those bolts is? They are just strong enough to break the bolt, which has a thin wall at the point where the designers want it to break. An ejectionseat truly launches itself out of the cockpit, it's not like he just explodes the bolts connecting it to the floor.
The purpose of the explosive is to blast the heat shield far away from Huygens. The whole structure was designed with this in mind.

Quote:
Originally Posted by M
Huygens has no legs. It was not designed for landing. It was just the way that the impact parameters made it a possibility that Huygens may survive it, as it did.
That's what I thought, but the animated descent sequence on the planetary society shows legs, as and they have been mentioned on the Huygens thread. The caption calls it "instrument configuration mode", so are they legs or not?
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