Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!esosun!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hinojosa
From: hinojosa@hp-sdd.hp.com (Daniel Hinojosa)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Shuttle computer reprogramming
Summary: 640k mem?
Keywords: shuttle, wind, programming
Message-ID: <1543@hp-sdd.HP.COM>
Date: 30 Sep 88 13:53:08 GMT
References: <6689@nsc.nsc.com>
Sender: netnews@hp-sdd.HP.COM
Reply-To: hinojosa@hp-sdd.hp.com.UUCP (Daniel Hinojosa)
Organization: Hewlett Packard, San Diego
Lines: 50

In article <6689@nsc.nsc.com> glennw@nsc.UUCP (Glenn Weinberg) writes:
>Everyone undoubtedly knows by now that the shuttle has made it into space
>again.  
 
Yes. To say that this launch was meerly beautiful is more than   
understatement. I have been a lifelong space-phile. I attribute this
to growing up a Vandenberg AFB. Yesterdays launch was the peak of
excitment for me in the last 2.8 years. Congratulations to all of
NASA and all the engineering firms who contributed to one of Americas
greatest moments. 

[deleted stuff]

>The question I, as a software engineer, have is: why should this require
>reprogramming at all?  Why couldn't the program have been written to
>accept input as to meteorological conditions at launch time?  Seems to me
>that hard-wiring this data into the program isn't particularly good
>programming practice.
>
>I don't want to believe that the shuttle programmers simply missed this.
>Is it a memory space issue?  ... [deleted possibilities]

Someone here at work mentioned that the shuttle has less memory than
many home computers, in the neighborhood of 640K. Let's assume for
now that this is the case. Not only does that seem like an amazingly
low amount of memory to help resolve such issues, but it seems like
it could easily be an item that might have been considered for improvement
after the Challenger incident. 

>I'm interested in any information you folks out there might have, purely
>from a professional curiosity point of view of course.
 
I hope this information is in the game. Please follow up so that I
too may learn more about this!

About the plume. I suppose as NASA says, it COULD have been an optical
illusion, but from all of these responses, I rather doubt that many
people could be wrong. I saw it, and wondered... A plume caused the 
last accident, could it be I'm looking for a reason for this to fail?
Nawwww, I love the shuttle program. I would NEVER want to see that
happen. Ever. So now I wonder why NASA decided to stay with O rings
at all. I seem to recall in the days right after Challenger, seeing
news stories about boosters. The Air Force had made boosters for use
at Vandenberg that were all one piece. I think they were a type of
fibre glass, and spun into a cylindrical shape. These were lighter,
therefor allowing a heavier payload. What's the story?

-- 
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