On Sun, 02 Feb 2003 15:17:06 -0800, Donald Qualls <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Even had NASA been certain there was critical damage to the TPS (like, >say, several adjacent tiles missing from the leading edge of a wing, >which seems a likely scenario at this point), essentially the only >option would have been to stay in orbit a few days longer, then pick >between dying as consumables run out (most likely oxygen first) or >taking your chances in reentry. I think I know how astronauts would >choose... If they had been certain Columbia couldn't re-enter, they might have been able to (NASA apparently says could have, but that's third hand) finish turning Atlantis around in time to mount a rescue. But their policy was, we can't fix it, so why figure out how to look at it? This attitude is why I am so adamant about having capabilities we don't know we'll need. Life is full of surprises, and space flight - and even "mere" amateur rocketry - is sufficiently marginal that sooner or later, you will *always* need that extra capability. We demonstrated this on November, when we flew KISS III-2. The baro altimeter had malfunctioned on III-1, damaging the parachute, so we simply turned it off for III-2. Because we had the second altimeter, that's all we had to do to work around the problem. Avoid and eschew unnecessary redundancy - but embrace and endorse necessary redundancy. -R _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
