Re: The Warm Equations

On 23 Jun 2024 16:37:14 GMT, ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan
<tednolan>) wrote:

Interesting to note the way margins of a real-life space venture are run:

Two astronauts have been stuck at the ISS for an extra two weeks,
so far, because their ride has flat tires, and it's not a crisis,
and nobody has had to volunteer to step out the airlock.

As Rudyard Kipling wrote, in "The Secret of the Machines":

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,  
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.
If you make a slip in handling us you die! 

The _equations_ are cold as ice, and will ever be. But _humans_ can be
warm, and design adequate safety margins into their systems; which
they usually do, when it is at all possible for them to afford doing
so.

John Savard