Discovery Lift-off Delays

The NBC affiliate in Orlando had on its' website the reasons and concerns for and about the recent delays in getting this recent launch done.

Weather - rain & wind - were the factors causing the actual delays for the renewed effort for a nighttime liftoff.

However, in reading further, it was revealed that the scheduled 12-day mission was running out of time to happen this year and was in peril of being scrubbed until next year.

Why?

Because the on-board computers on the shuttle DO NOT have the capability to change their clocks from the 365Th day of a year to the first day of a new year.

That's right, something your cell phone can do, cannot be done by the computers on-board the space shuttle.

The engineers do have a patch for this, but withheld applying it because it hasn't been fully tested. It's 2006 and it hasn't been fully tested.

Did anyone at NASA pick-up a newspaper or turn on a TV to become aware of the Y2K scare of a few years back that had people wondering if planes in the air at midnight on that New Years holiday where going to be dropping from the sky? Or did they notice other government agencies and private businesses spend millions retrofitting software so that crashes to computer systems wouldn't happen?

News reports of the time had people stockpiling food, money and other essentials to at least temporarily thwart the effects of a complete societal breakdown caused by software failures.

Did NASA notice any of that?

And they are talking about putting permanent colonies on the moon?