"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:
George William Herbert wrote:
The response was "Yes, but now they're working 95% of the time,
rather than 55%".

As I understand it, one of the things that motivated the invention
of integrated circuits was reliability -- of naval electronics
and avionics. The systems were coming up against the limits
of what one could reliably do with discrete components.

Reliability comes not just from increasing MTBF, but in decreasing
MTTR. BITE (Built In Test Equipment), modular electronics, designing
for maintenance... All these things go into increasing uptime, and
IC's make them all much easier.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.