Word: back-up
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...Base, the shuttle will be placed atop a modified Boeing 747 for a slow, two-day piggyback return to Cape Canaveral, where the ship will be refitted for a second launch, probably in September. The astronauts will be Joe Engle, 48, and Richard Truly, 43, this mission's back-up crew...
Indeed they were not. More than any spacecraft before it, Columbia depends on computer memory and problem-solving skills. It carries six computers in all, four primary, plus a back-up and a spare. This electronic brainpower has total command of the ship, navigating it, controlling fuel consumption, firing its rocket engines and many small, jetlike thrusters. Even when an astronaut is operating the controls, as in the final plunge back through the atmosphere, he is in effect flying the computers rather than the ship itself. Whatever maneuver he calls for, it is the computers that turn the commands from...
...Extra computers provide another kind of insurance. If one of the look-alike machines suddenly goes berserk, issuing wild commands, its three brethren will promptly veto those instructions. In other words, the majority outvotes the minority. If the four cannot resolve their differences in a civilized computer way, the back-up will intervene and settle the issue...
...Columbia's primary computers were a 25th of a second ahead of the backup. For human beings, a 25th of a second is a mere blink of the eye. But for the computers it was a yawning gap that put communications between the overeager main machines and their back-up badly "out of sync," turning their exchanges into electronic gibberish. Said an exasperated controller in Houston: "The back-up computer simply couldn't talk to the other four on board. The computer guys have never seen anything quite like this...
...stage. Trust, his most objective album, is also his least taut: it breathes, and sometimes it hyperventilates. The songs are more spacious, giving Elvis more chances to pose, to mince a bit, and some of his vocals have a slurred, lolling quality, made creepy by strangely dissonant, disconnected back-up vocals. See him there, leaning against the piano, "trying to look Italian to the musical Valium," all hope gone. He's always been cynical, but his anger signaled hope; Trust is faith in nothing. This is some of his most "listenable" music, meaning that you can play it at parties...