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To: blam

My first thought at the headline was “What, did they lose it?”


3 posted on 12/03/2011 7:24:34 AM PST by Renderofveils (My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. - Nabokov)
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To: Renderofveils

more likely things have gone well. Because of the very high cost of just getting something into space, much less sending a technician in to space to change out batteries or troubleshoot problems, space-based systems are built to complete their missions when lots of stuff goes wrong.

When things go right, there’s extra mission capability. This is why a lot of satellites are functional far past their expected lifetimes. Since there are no astronauts involved (by far the most needy and fragile component in any space system), time on orbit isn’t a system constraint. So long as there’s enough propellant left to get home, there’s no reason to end things just because the original schedule that assumed things would go wrong says so.


10 posted on 12/03/2011 7:56:14 AM PST by jz638
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