snakebitten shuttle

Sitting here watching CNN, once again a space shuttle flight and visit to the International Space Station are drawing media attention for the wrong reasons. The shuttle arrived at the space station a few days ago carrying a new solar panel array that will boost power to the station. The array was successfully installed but upon power up apparently produced a cascading failure of the station's computer system. This computer system handles pretty much all of the vital station functions, including temperature and oxygen regulation. The problem is being worked while the shuttle astronauts attend to spacewalking duties including a small fix to the shuttle thermal blanket that was peeled away during launch. Despite the computer troubles and thermal blanket damage, the astronauts are in no real danger. The real concern with the computer failure is not loss of oxygen, it's loss of orientation. If the station propulsion systems lose orientation in space, the station orbit could degrade and then the astronauts would have a real problem. Thankfully word came down late this afternoon that the computers rebooted and the station is approaching nominal health.