parachutes on mars.

How can NASA say that mars atmosphere is 1/10th as dense as earths when they use parachutes to slow the landing craft down???!!!!
Everyone knows that parachutes only work when there is sufficient air density to put pressure on them and thus slow whatever object they are connected to down.
I would say this is more proof NASA are lying out of thier behinds!

That's why the crafts also needed big balloons to land as well.... Cause the chutes didn't slow it down as much... Also, they use more, and bigger chutes, than they'd need on Earth....

mabye so, but i dont think its as simple as that.
Anyone got specs on the diameter of chutes used by martian probes? we could compare to earthly chutes and see.

Well, we already know NASA is lying about some things. All you need to do is take a cursory glance at some odd Apollo 16 film footage and a videotaped event over Sao Paolo, Brazil in 1996 during shuttle mission STS-80 to figure that out.

I'm not a physics expert, so I won't touch the nature of this topic other than the fact that NASA lies.

[Edited on 14-10-2003 by heelstone]

I done A level physics, but im a little rusty, so ill leave it to someone more up to speed.
I dont think its a difficult calculation, i remember a few similar ones i needed to do before, just dont fancy digging all my books out! lol

Pressure at the surface of mars is about the same pressure as the earth at 60000 ft.

Baloons can go up past 100000 ft.

The parachute only needs to have the right size for the level of drag desired.

Thats kind of my point though, the parachutes dont seem that large, smaller than the ones used on earth. I know the probes aint large or heavy but something inside says it is just not right.

Remember the Mars Lander, and the ballon used to cushion it's landing? In the pathfinder photos, you can see the balloon around the lander...