A Space.com story has this comment about Curiosity: "the spacecraft must slow itself from roughly 13,200 mph (about 21,250 kilometers per hour) to zero in only seven minutes." Getting it to zero mph in seven minutes shouldn't be a problem even if everything fails ..... Joe
Right. Getting to 0 mph is pretty much assured. The difficulty will be ensuring they don't get to 0 mph any quicker than seven minutes. Apollo 10 went from 24,790 mph (almost twice as fast) at entry interface to 125 mph at main chute deployment in just 11 minutes. Of course we do have a bit more atmosphere to help out. Jared On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> wrote:
A Space.com story has this comment about Curiosity: "the spacecraft must slow itself from roughly 13,200 mph (about 21,250 kilometers per hour) to zero in only seven minutes." Getting it to zero mph in seven minutes shouldn't be a problem even if everything fails ..... Joe
of course Apollo 10 did not need take-off being earth was home.
Right. Getting to 0 mph is pretty much assured. The difficulty will be
ensuring they don't get to 0 mph any quicker than seven minutes.
Apollo 10 went from 24,790 mph (almost twice as fast) at entry interface to 125 mph at main chute deployment in just 11 minutes. Of course we do have a bit more atmosphere to help out.
Jared
On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> wrote:
A Space.com story has this comment about Curiosity: "the spacecraft must slow itself from roughly 13,200 mph (about 21,250 kilometers per hour) to zero in only seven minutes." Getting it to zero mph in seven minutes shouldn't be a problem even if everything fails ..... Joe
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participants (3)
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erikhansen＠thebluezone.net -
Jared Smith -
Joe Bauman