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[i]I just received an email from a reporter who asked a simple question: "Was your landing successful?" Here is my response (It is long.): Our landing was successful. It was also the wildest ride I've ever been on in all of our simulations. We were at the point in the mission in which the Intrepid had already deorbited and reentered the Earth's atmosphere — past the point of no return. It was on its glide toward a landing and only about 3 minutes from the final approach phase and just 6 minutes from wheels on the ground. Things were going smoothly when... BAM!!! ...the power gets knocked out in Mission Control for about 2 seconds, long enough to shut down everything — the computers at the flight control consoles, our sound system, the live YouTube feed computer... EVERYTHING! The students immediately swung into recovery mode, restarting their computers and getting ready to read their backup files to restore their data and continue. Then the astronaut crew comes on the air-ground comm loop. "Russell, we've had a power surge or something and briefly lost power. All of our equipment shut down." It was not limited to just Mission Control! The team went into action to restart the equipment on the Intrepid simulator. Within about 3 minutes, everything was fully operational and the Mission Control Team and Astronaut Crew worked together to bring the Intrepid home safely with a perfect landing. We are used to small glitches like a computer freezing up and having to be restarted or a loose connection somewhere interfering with radio communication. We had never had anything on this scale, not even close, and the timing could not have been worse. Parents were gasping and groaning, but the kids stayed perfectly calm. They chose to tackle the problem.[/i]
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