"The reason for all the Teflon wire?"
Very interesting post. My degree is in electronics, and I have an interest in NASA, but didn't know that.
My family was fortunate enough to pay a visit to the Kennedy Space Center last summer. I was absolutely amazed. The Saturn rocket was impressive, and imposing, but what struck me was the Mercury rockets. Those guys were pioneers! No illusions of a huge system that somehow gives comfort by it's size and complexity. Nope, those guys were on little rockets that looked like they were put together in someone's garage.
That's the American spirit! God Bless those men and women of NASA.
Exactly! I was driving by the Kennedy Space Center just three days ago and saw how small the Mercury rocket looked. It was a really, really gutsy thing for an astronaut to sit on top of that roman candle.
They knew the risks, as have all the astronauts since. Somehow, NASA's meticulous systems planning (another major "invention" of the space program) was viewed as goof-proof, since we had such long strings of successes. It's still an extremely complex undertaking with thousands of areas of discrete risk. It's a testament to human will and intellect that these things are successful more than 50% of the time.