I'm Not a Rocket Scientist But...

NASA is apparently basing the schedule of the next shuttle launch around concerns over what will happen to the onboard computers if the shuttle is in flight on New Year's Eve.

The worry is that shuttle computers aren't designed to make the change from the 365th day of the old year to the first day of the new year while in flight. NASA has never had a shuttle in space Dec. 31 or Jan. 1.

"We've just never had the computers up and going when we've transitioned from one year to another,"said Discovery astronaut Joan Higginbotham."We're not really sure how they're going to operate."

Now not only am I not a rocket scientist, I'm not a computer scientist either, but shouldn't it be really easy to test this? I mean couldn't they just fire up the on-board computers and reset the date to December 31 and the time to 11:50 p.m. then sit back and wait 10 minutes to see what happens?

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 09:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment