Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: New (!?!?!?!) Shuttle Computers
Message-ID: <1991Mar12.003321.13988@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1991 00:33:21 GMT
References: <1991Mar7.142311.10412@vaxa.strath.ac.uk> <6963@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <1991Mar11.201910.8476@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Mar11.201910.8476@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
>If you want to see NEW technology being used at NASA, check out the 
>UNmanned projects.  They aren't afraid to use new technology.  Why?
>because the worst that can happen is we lose an expensive piece of
>equipment...

Uh, I hate to burst your bubble :-), but the unmanned projects also avoid
new technology like the plague.  Losing that "expensive piece of equipment"
can mean waiting *decades* for another chance to fly your experiment to
its chosen destination.  There is enormous pressure to use off-the-shelf
technology even when new technology would greatly benefit the mission.
This is why the unmanned missions are still using 1965-vintage propulsion
systems.  They only recently started using solid-state image sensors
rather than image tubes, and *that* happened mostly because JPL's preferred
tubes were out of production and unobtainable!

The only time people aren't afraid to use new technology is when they can
lose a mission without serious damage to careers or funding.  The days
when that was true in (most of) NASA are long gone.  The Explorer-series
people can maybe risk it, since they've got steady funding for an ongoing
series of missions.  The planetary people certainly can't.
-- 
"But this *is* the simplified version   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
for the general public."     -S. Harris |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry