Then I wonder how expensive was it to save the Apollo 13 astronauts since
failure wasn't an option?
Ken
On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 9:04 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Thu, 22 Jul 2021, Troy Prideaux wrote:
"if failure is not an option, success can get expensive" (PeterStibrany).
Oh Henry, that's one ripper quote!
Yeah, Peter really nailed that one.
The big reason why Gossamer Condor won the Kremer Prize (for man-powered
flight) with relative ease, after decades of failure by other groups, was
that it was optimized, not for maximum performance, but for easy repair --
for rapid recovery from failure. A test mishap that would sideline a
higher-tech effort for months was an overnight repair for G.C., so it made
much more rapid progress, and was ready before it ran out of money.
Henry
