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Originally Posted by kucharek
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Originally Posted by Jerry
The purpose of the explosive is to blast the heat shield far away from Huygens. The whole structure was designed with this in mind.
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No. The explosive bolts are just for severing some connections. First, Hugens hung on the drogue chute. Then some bolts were cut and the rest dropped away from the back heatshield/drogue-chute assembly. Then the big main chute was ejected and then other bolts severed, so the main heatshield dropped away from the rest. No need to push some parts forcefully away from the rest by using explosives. I guess you confuse some stuff as the chute system was built by Martin-Baker, who has a pretty good reputation for their ejection seats. Or you confused it with the mortar which fires the chute through the wake of the probe so it could unfurl. |
You are corrected, thank you. I learned to day ESA has posted new wind speeds near the ground. The first number they gave us was 5m/s, and with that number, I could not create the landing sequence i spelled out in the other 'potential threat'. With the lower wind speed, it is possible, even probable the heat shield was dropped off at ~100-300 meters, and Huygen still came down almost right on top of the heat shield crater.
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Originally Posted by Kebsis
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Jerry had a theory which the success of the Huygens probe disproves. So he needs to try and shoehorn that success into his theory now. Originally he said that Huygens would miss Titan entirely, or crash land if it did hit (in reality if his theory were correct the probe would not have made it very close to Saturn at all). To say that he is now grasping at straws is an understatement to say the least.
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Here was my hypothesis, as posted January 12
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Originally Posted by jerry
On page one of this thread, I predicted the density of Titan is about 4.42g/cc By the book it is suppose to be 1.88g/cc and that is a HUGE difference in the mass of the MOON Titan. How will it effect Huygens? I think there is very high probability that Huygens will not survive atmospheric entry - I could be much more certain if I knew the engineering criteria for the heat shield.
However, the absolute velocity at which Huygens will try to pass through the entry phase is anyone’s guess, including mine: I don’t know the density of Saturn, nor can I closely approximate it because I do not know how it was determined. (According to my hypothesis, the mass of Saturn is very important, because the acceleration of Huygens will not only be impacted by the mass of Titan and the Sun, but also by the mass of Saturn and all of her moons.)
I don’t know what the initial velocity is, what the planned trajectory is, the atmospheric density profile, the drag coefficient. I don't need to know any of those things to predict with certainty that if my hypothesis is correct, if Huygens survives entry, and manages to collect and broadcast accelerometer and Doppler data, there will be no question something is seriously wrong. The more data, the better.
And no, Russ, I am not setting anyone up. Sure I will want to look at the numbers if NASA tells us the probe landing was 'perfectly puzzling', (I hope they don't sit on them, the way they are sitting on the data for Spirit and Opportunity), but I expect numbers way above and below three sigma, on Doppler acceleration, heat, drag, velocity at impact; and yes, you can quote me.
A complete bust - no data, does little to help my case, there are too many possible failure modes.
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...and I never stated Huygens would miss Titan.
ESA has already revised the distance estimates of the original pictures released (from 16 km down to 12km) and as I mentioned, the wind velocity at the surface. It is only a matter of time before they revise the time from entry to landing, and it is going to be a big shock.