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Wow that's fascinating. Just mind blowing.
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And to think, that thing was designed by engineers who used slide rules (well maybe some of them had HP-35s). If it had been designed by modern methods, it would have died within days of its "design life". Ther's a lot to be said for the old fashioned "safety factor" (aka - "we only have a vague idea of what we're doing, so we should make some really big allowances")
Kudos to NASA for doing this job right, and long may it continue. After working with NASA-Langley for three years as a contractor's employee, I have first hand knowledge of how even the Moon Flight and Skylab programs had to make do with all sorts of cobbled up training systems. We had a monopoly in the region on vacuum tubes (valves in UK speak) to be used as spares for the servo amplifiers that ran the extra-vehicular trainers for the astronauts. This was in 1971.
Looking back, it's either "careful husbanding of resources" or real cheap!
Frank
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By coincidence I`ve been watching a TV program this week on the building of a British communications satellite that required a faultless performance that will last for (ONLY ?) 15 years.
Great play was made on the silver backed covering that protected the vehicle against the enormous range of temperatures that would be encountered. As this material didn`t exist in in 1977 I wondered what they had used on Voyager that has proved to be so successful.
Jim
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I think it was gold foil, Jim. Certainly there was a lot of it on the Lunar Lander. John should know.
Frank
