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From: Ken Garlington <garlingtonke@lmtas.lmco.com>
Subject: Re: ARIANE-5 Failure
Date: 1996/06/07
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references: <834097751.22632.0@assen.demon.co.uk> <31B7A88D.446B@lri.fr>
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organization: Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems
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Date: 1996-06-07T00:00:00+00:00
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Tronche Ch. le pitre wrote:
> 
> John McCabe wrote:
> >
> > I have heard that the failure of the Ariane 5 rocket's first launch on
> > Tuesday was caused by a software fault in the attitude control system.
> 
> French media have presented several successive explanations but always
> invoking software failure.

Aerospace Daily said that the current explanation was an erroneous command
from the flight control computers to the nozzles, driving them all hard over.
Such a command could be due to software, or to interface electronics failure,
or possibly noise on the wire connecting the two. I wouldn't be ready to
blame the software just yet.

Of course, assuming that the root cause is traced to the software, what of
it? Using Ada certainly doesn't ensure proper operation of a software system!

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