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RE[4]: Memory management
by zima on Fri 21st Sep 2012 23:59 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Memory management"
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Well, that's not strictly what really happens...

NVM that our stations are more or less mostly testbeds for deep space vessels (with the convenience of, yes, being relatively easy to reach quickly; or to evacuate...), failures are common, as is experimenting with proper approaches. Also:

a) ISS is really... Mir-2 (as in, the core module of ISS is practically identical to Mir, because it was built concurrently with it, as a backup - it even had "Мир-2" painted on it, when it was kept in storage; the whole Russian section is generally what was supposed to be the entirety of Mir-2, also where main computers, engines, and such of the station are - the rest is, sort of, an attached cargo). It wasn't so much about designing things, more using what's at hand and with minimum of costs...

b) the "non-Mir" part of the station was largely crippled in its design, with how it had to be nominally launched by the STS, so as to give that horribly wasteful contraption some pretend-purpose (really, a spacecraft wasting most of launched mass on airframe? ...and, considering that we did automatic rendezvous already in the 60s, the Shuttle was conceptually obsolete before seriously getting on the drawing boards; now, with STS finally out of the way, there's even a fairly inexpensive project of attaching small orbital tugs to some of the ISS modules remaining in-storage, to launch them like that on efficient expendable rockets)

Overall, assuming failures and building in lots of redundancies and/or planning for contingencies seems to be more the way.

Edited 2012-09-22 00:19 UTC

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