Not necessarily. If a bad address line had been in the design, that should have turned up long ago when testing the boards. Missing that sort of problem would be on a par with the metric/english snafu that doomed the Polar Lander a few years ago. Taking a generalist approach (since I've never seen any of these boards), I might speculate that a connector had broken or a cable had been pinched. There are more esoteric things that might cause an address problem, but I'd have to have some idea of the system architecture and I don't. But over the last few days, the engineers have doubtless been going through a type of brainstorming that I know very well. Someone proposes a "what if" and it usually gets shot full of holes. But every now and then, someone describes a scenario that would result in all the evidence at hand. That's the "working hypothesis" as described by Pete Theisinger. It's not always right, but good engineers can get really seriously engaged by the process. It's fun and it makes you crazy when you look up and realize you're four hours late for supper. We'll just have to sit on the sidelines and see what happens. I'm glad that NASA's being open about this--it's nice seeing them not playing the stuffy beaurocracy they sometimes are--and giving us a chance to see the analysis unfold. I hope that it gives people a chance to see how engineering works, since the typical TV portrayal of engineers is pretty dismal. Hey, fingers crossed for tonight! Michael
Thanks for that lucid explanation, Michael. Does this mean that Opportunity has the same problem?
C.
--- Michael Carnes <moogiebird@earthlink.net> wrote:
I was plodding away on the treadmill watching the news conference when Pete Theisinger described the problem such as they know it.
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