Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!petunia!news
From: rteasdal@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Falconer)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Shuttle computers (Really, "Drop the landin' gear, Jed!")
Message-ID: <282b9084.2da2@petunia.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 11 May 91 06:34:44 GMT
References: <1991May3.111445.1@vf.jsc.nasa.gov> <1082@igor.Rational.COM> <1991May7.120505.1@vf.jsc.nasa.gov>
Organization: Cal Poly State Univ,CSC Dept,San Luis Obispo,CA 93407
Lines: 34



In article <1991May7.120505.1@vf.jsc.nasa.gov> kent@vf.jsc.nasa.gov writes:
>> (descent pole indeed).

>I have never seen what NASA claimed the failure rate to be before challenger

>but I would guess it was billed as higher than 1 per 78.  The changes to many
>systems were major.  SRB's Main engines, APU's, Brakes.  Almost nothing could
>save any crew in any vehicle from a challenger type break up.  
>
>--

	I have met and talked to a SR-71 Blackbird pilot who punched
out of his craft while travelling at just under Mach 3. He came through
it all right; was more badly hurt from landing in a saguaro cactus on
the ground. _If_ the shuttle had provision for crew ejection (and no, 
I would not claim that to be a feasible post-Challenger refit) there
would have been a significant chance for STS-51L's crew (some of them)
to have survived. The forensic evidence suggests that several of the
people on the flight deck were alive and breathing (emergency air packs
do not spontaneously switch themselves on), said persons being killed
by the freely falling cabin's 350+kph impact with the Atlantic.

	The original shuttle should have incorporated (encapsulated?)
ejection capability. That it did not was one of the most egregious
design flaws yet promulgated by NASA. Let's do it right next time, eh?



-- 
||||||   Russ Teasdale -- rteasdal@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU  --  (Falconer)  |||||||
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Gentlemen, if we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure." - D. Quayle