Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: New (!?!?!?!) Shuttle Computers
Message-ID: <1991Mar19.235853.6842@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1991 23:58:53 GMT
References: <1991Mar7.142311.10412@vaxa.strath.ac.uk> <6963@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <1991Mar11.201910.8476@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> <1991Mar12.003321.13988@zoo.toronto.edu> <3356@phred.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <3356@phred.UUCP> petej@phred.UUCP (Peter Jarvis) writes:
>> 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. 
>
>Note the relatively new Boeing IUS...

I note it.  I also note that something very much like it could have been
built in 1965.  The electronics would have been clunkier, the performance
would have been a bit lower due to heavier casings, and they might not
have been able to do the telescoping nozzles, but there's hardly any
fundamentally new technology in the IUS.  It's a very ordinary two-stage
solid rocket.
-- 
"[Some people] positively *wish* to     | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
believe ill of the modern world."-R.Peto|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry