Well not exactly. I know that story. This fool has the physics all wrong. There is no parachute at all that would stop a craft like that under those conditions. In the case of Steve Squyres' MER team they were having problems with chute DESIGN, but not the actual physics of atmospheric entry. Their biggest problem really was the time factor facing them based on a launch window they had to make.
Let’s have a lot of unmanned probes and landers that can do real science relatively cheaply rather than have a manned mission to Mars that will be hugely expensive. A science probe mission is focused on science. A manned mission is, rightly, focused on keeping people safe and science is secondary. Someday I would like for man to terraform Mars (if possible, and it would take tens of thousands of years at least). We should spend the next 50 or 100 years mostly on unmanned missions. By then we may have better propulsion systems that would be helpful on a manned mission and we will have done a lot more science in the meantime.