Well, if you mean the rescue I think you mean, it's actually in the Indian
Ocean. That's where the Challenger went down. The fuel tank and solids
(booster rockets) went down near Florida, but the Challenger went down on
the far side of Africa if memory serves me.
I, along with others, had the job of analyzing the potential failure modes
in the engine controller in the wake of the Challenger accident. It's
quite an interesting device, considering it's made of really old and simple
TTL logic with plated wire memory (faster, though not much, than core of
that generation). It had no stack, and therefore a different way of
"calling" a subroutine, requiring you to have your program store in
read/write memory. This ultimately meant that flaws masked by the
redundancy of the system could become "inherited" from one mission to the
next. There were other pitfalls as well.
Dick
----------
> From: Sam Ismail <dastar_at_ncal.verio.com>
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: Who invented the internet?
> Date: Wednesday, February 17, 1999 11:53 AM
>
> On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>
> > It's somewhat divergent from the current topic, but it might interest
some
> > to know that the Honeywell '516 is the engine control computer which
was
> > still in use on the space shuttle at the time of the Challenger
accident.
> > There were two, one redundant, for each engine, of which I believe
there
> > were three.
>
> Do I sense a potential rescue mission somewhere off the coast of Florida?
>
> Sellam Alternate e-mail:
dastar_at_siconic.com
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> Always hasslin' the man.
>
> Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
> See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
> [Last web site update: 02/15/99]
Received on Wed Feb 17 1999 - 14:20:58 GMT