Re: STS-51-F (the ATO abort)..

Mika Takala wrote:
"Gatorcountyr" <gatorcountry@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:6c97a55a-8f2a-4f03-9489-68d18ed53b09@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
After they decided to ATO, Houston made calls indicating first "limits
to enable" then later "limits to inhibit"...

What exactly did they mean by this?

A ground controller, person who is looking at the telemetry data, saw that the engine had been shut down because of failing sensors, and the engine itself was fine. He then saw similar things happening on a set of sensors for another engine, so he commanded the capcom to tell the crew to disable those sensors - in another words, inhibiting the control systems from reacting to out-of-limits data output from the sensors. That then preventing the engine control logic from shutting down the engine that was in danger of being shut down without a valid reason.

There have been previous usenet discussions of this subject. One of them points out that if another engine had been shut down as threathened, the ET would have made a hard, unsafe and unacceptable landing to Saudi-Arabia, and the Orbiter would perhaps have tried a TAL or AOA abort.

This was one of the cases in which ground controller saved the day.

Mostly correct. The only really glaring error:

The BOOSTER flight controller was a "she" (Jenny Howard), not a "he".
.

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