A space shuttle is a complex vehicle. Just think how many databases are needed to catalog its hundreds of thousands of components, to know when each part has been replaced, and to locate faults before they cause disaster.
A space shuttle is a complex vehicle. Just think how many databases are needed to catalog its hundreds of thousands of components, to know when each part has been replaced, and to locate faults before they cause disaster.
In addition, supercomputers are employed around the world in an attempt to decipher the findings collected by instruments from the dozens of experiments carried out in an average flight. Think of the control room in Houston with the giant screens. Think about the interfaces that bring every peep of what is happening on the shuttle to millions of Internet surfers and to a billion TV viewers.
All this equipment, together with two thousand tons of fuel, hundreds of workers and enormous logistics and preparations of at least two years are intended to serve a ten-day to two-week stay in space, of a crew of seven astronauts.
Ilan Ramon's flight that leaves tonight is proof of human progress. In the Apollo project, the astronauts reached the moon with the computing power of a pocket computer. Today, the astronauts receive the updated instructions to be carried out in the morning every working day in... e-mail. For those who want to know, the mailing address is an address that NASA keeps secret and gives it only to his family.
We will keep our fingers crossed for Ramon. The launch is expected at 17:39 at the earliest
