Word: back-ups
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Parked on the desert, Columbia had a decidedly unwarlike look. It survived its journey in remarkably fine style. A dozen or so of its 31,000 heat-shielding tiles had come unstuck during the thunderous ascent. But during its glowing, 2,700° F plunge through the atmosphere, a maneuver...
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...
At part of Columbia's fail-safe system, all four primary computers are programmed-that is, mathematically instructed-to perform in exactly the same way. Such redundancy protects the spacecraft against computer breakdowns. Though any one of the computers can operate the ship on its own, mission rules require...
But for this digital democracy to work smoothly, the computers have to be in constant conversation, performing as many as 440 checks on each other every second. That, of course, requires extremely precise synchronization. Yet even after repeated troubleshooting, the controllers in Houston found that Columbia's primary computers...
IT IS A GARISH, cosmic nightclub, the figures on the floor drug-addled, lobotomized, throwing each other over, punching each other up, selling each other out. Elvis Costello has played a lot of clubs these last few years; after an angry, violent American tour, morsels of America sizzled in his...