George Noori had Hoagland on C2C the night of the landing along with a few other guests. I only heard part of the show as I fell to sleep but I recall something about the speed at which the Curiosity landing craft would release its parachute. That was said to be above the speed of sound by one of the guests. I guess that's about 700 mph. That seems a bit fast to consider a parachute, doesn't it?
That struck me as odd because of the severe stress on parachute cables at that speed (not to mention the chute). Of course, the atmospheric density would have to be taken into account but this is at least a potential data point we can mine to verify. I've been around steel cables used to dock huge oil barges and heard stories about their snapping, and slicing men in two. How do we find the relevent numbers here and what would they show? I could be wrong about this-- and the air density, the chute and the cable strength can all be proven to handle the momentum of the craft given its velocity. I'd like to see JPL's calculations however, or see someone double check their figures.
In the NASA animation, we see the chute deploy but I grew up watching cartoon physics on The Bugs Bunny Roadrunner Hour and enjoyed the stop-motion / identification of the cayote's biological name. That was instructive edutainment that is missing from the NASA animation. When the chute deploys, NASA JPL should freeze the frame and identify the parameters such as velocity, Mars g, and cable strength. Being a university and high tech lab, one would think they could use that wonderful education cartoon technique. Alternatively, they could release comic books. Todays comic books are beautifully coloured and digitally enhanced with a lot of detail.
Just to give you a better feel for what I'm talking about, I found this 2 minute video showing how a real cable snapped back at 100 mph after failing to arrest a jet landing on an aircraft carrier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuIbvX_B7sY
The situation is not precisely comparable but maybe it'll stimulate someone's interest in cables and parachutes here. It's mind boggling to think that JPL/NASA might be hoaxing this Curiosity mission-- the capacity for organized deception and straight-faced lying goes far beyond anything I've ever before considered but the Aurora shooting and then more Apollo analysis here with Simon Shack makes my consideration of this very serious. The lying is so organized, detailed and relentless that I often wonder if demonic forces don't indeed exist, that carry these operations out.