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Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle (1986)

109 points| michaelsbradley | 8 years ago |history.nasa.gov | reply

15 comments

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[+] flashmob|8 years ago|reply
Quote "There is not enough room in the memory of the main line computers for all the programs of ascent, descent, and payload programs in flight, so the memory is loaded about four time from tapes, by the astronauts."

Woah. Did they do this right until 2011, or were their systems upgraded?

[+] joering2|8 years ago|reply
I don't know that, but if it wasn't breaking at all then why would they be upgrading solution than never failed?

Apollo 13 whole computer system had less power than the phone in your pocket; yet that was perfectly enough to run the vehicle. Crazy times...

[+] mongol|8 years ago|reply
How reliable are / were tapes?
[+] questerzen|8 years ago|reply
Funny, I just reread "What do you care what other people think?" yesterday. The parallel of NASA's design process for avionics software to TDD is both striking and revealing. People struggling with TDD could definitely benefit a lot by thinking hard about the examples of the main engine design process and avionics software. Thanks for posting!
[+] Kenji|8 years ago|reply
> A mathematical model was made to calculate erosion. This was a model based not on physical understanding but on empirical curve fitting.

Very interesting point. A lot of today's "science" works like this, and it is a deeply flawed approach.