From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,9df152c1ff02365e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-08-04 19:17:50 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: aek@vib.usr.pu.ru (Alexander Kopilovitch) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ariane5 FAQ, Professional version, first draft Date: 4 Aug 2003 19:17:49 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.152.82.175 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1060049870 27402 127.0.0.1 (5 Aug 2003 02:17:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 5 Aug 2003 02:17:50 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:41188 Date: 2003-08-05T02:17:50+00:00 List-Id: rc211v wrote: > >A. There are several points which are different for Ariane 5 vs. Ariane 4, > >one of which was instrumental to the events: Ariane 4 is a vertical launch > >vehicle where as Ariane 5 is slightly tilted. > > Ariane 4 software was developed to tolerate certain amount of inclination > >but not as much as required by Ariane 5. > >It's absolutely incredible. As far as you know, do you believe a >conspiracy theory? Well, reading the source info and "processing" it, I was on the verge of conspiracy theory, several times. But two things deterred me from that: 1) the Chernobyl's story provided me even more incredible facts (some of them, in sequence, lead to catastrophe, while others immediately followed it); 2) I understand clearly that in such circumstances any level of suspicion will not lead to a solid and/or concrete accusation. Actually, any good conspiracy theory for such cases should focus not at particular decisions and moves, which lead to disaster, but at the actions that created the circumstances in which some "natural implementation" of the disaster becomes probable (perhaps, with little "help"). Obviously, this "probabilistic approach" to investigation is still quite undeveloped, and therefore it can't be used effectively -- you can't collect enough information for that, and you can't convince anybody with that (if you aren't a dictator -;) . Therefore I think that we should simply ignore a possibility of conspiracy here. Anyway, every good conspiracy theory should start with the question: "Who could reasonably expect to benefit from that?". And I'm not interested in that question for the case of Ariane 5 -:) . Alexander Kopilovitch aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia