The right thing appears in 31 seconds, before time X. At the time when the 120-ton shuttle stands, surrounded by almost 4 million pounds of rocket fuel, emitting poisonous vapors, with a clear desire to defy earth's gravity; his onboard computers receive a command. Four identical computers running identical software collect information from thousands of sensors, making hundreds of millisecond decisions, validating each decision, checking with each other 250 times a second. The fifth computer, with other software, is ready to take control in the event of the remaining four failing. At a time point of -6.6 seconds, if pressures, pumps and temperatures are normal, computers give the order to light the main shuttle engines - each of the three engines flashes exactly 160 milliseconds, tons of super-cooled liquid fuel get into the combustion chambers, the ship trembles on its launch pad, held on the ground only by fasteners. When the main engines reach a million pounds of thrust, their exhausts turn into blue diamonds of flame.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/4034/
All Articles