Wagner,

The Space Shuttle has some 5 main independent computers, each one "thinking"
alone (that is, measuring, computing, evaluating and deciding) and they
"vote" in real time to decide what to do. The technology is really
impressive. But even THAT technology was designed in the 70's and early
80's.

The truth is that, appart from the military, realy state-of-the-art
technology hits the mainstream some 10~20 years after it is developed and
proven.

Plane design and test is extremely complex and takes YEARS to complete. You
end up with technology some 5~10 years old. Then you want your production
lines to be alive some 5~10 years building the same basic model. And even
after that, the lifetime of most commertial airplanes is well over 20 years.

See what I mean?

That specific LearJet was built in 1976...

I can only hope that investigators could determine the cause of the accident
and prevent the same thing from happening again.

Kind regards,
Andres Tarzia
Technology Consultant, SMART S.A.
e-mail: atarzia@smart.com.ar

-----Original Message-----
From: Wagner Lipnharski
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Sent: 10/25/99 8:56 PM
Subject: [OT] A Learjet in distress

[...much deleted...]

With today's technology, mainly communication technology, I JUST CAN NOT
BELIEVE that in 5 hours flying in automatic pilot, it is not possible to
download information from a Learjet board computer and understand why
everybody aboard is dead or unconscious, and otherwise try to land it
even in a bad landing, better than wait it to crash.

[...another lot deleted...]

I am pretty sad about those people and families, and thousands of others
that died today because somebody just didn't thought enough to try to
increase a little bit the possibility to increase safety and avoid a
deadly accident.

Wagner Lipnharski