Re: [Fwd: starship-design: HIGHLY OPTIMIZED TOLERANCE]

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Ben Franchuk writes:
 > I thought the problem, is was that batteries and other equipment,
 > since it was only ment for 30 days, could not survive the real cold
 > after 80 days. Also a design flaw in the software may also have been
 > a factor.

As I heard it explained the deep cold was not so much a problem as
extreme thermal cycling, something like 60 degrees C variation between
day and night.

The only major software problem I heard of caused spontaneous reboots of
the lander due to a somewhat esoteric problem called "priority
inversion", but was solved fairly early in the mission.  Most major
software problems would have caused the lander to enter a predictable
safe mode, but what appeared to happen was that the lander stopped
talking to Earth, briefly made minimal response to Earth commands a few
days later, and then never communicated with Earth again.