Re: Ariane5 FAQ

[Vinzent Hoefler <ada.rocks@jlfencey.com>]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

>Vinzent Hoefler wrote:
>> Well, one way or another - it did. It did exactly what is was supposed
>> to do.
>
>No matter how many times people on this newsgroup repeat this,
>it will not become true.

It doesn't have to become true because it already is. :-P
 
>The code was written on the assumption
>that a certain parameter would never reach a particular value.

And that this would not happen in normal operation was perfectly true
for the Ariane 4.

>Its behavior under the contrary assumption was left unspecified.

No, AFAIK it wasn't. IIRC the system was specified to shut down and
send diagnostic data in this case. And that's what it did.

>It certainly did not do "what it was supposed to do" once the
>assumption was violated.

It did *exactly* what it was designed to do.

>The system pretended that a hardware
>error had happened.

Yes and if this would have happened on the Ariane 4 system, it would
have been exactly that - a hardware error.
And that's the whole point: The system was never designed for the
Ariane 5.


Vinzent.

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