XPost: sci.space.policy, sci.physics   
   From: invalid@invalid.com   
      
   On 10/16/2016 5:48 PM, Vaughn Simon wrote:   
   > On 10/16/2016 2:36 PM, jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com wrote:   
   >> So what's the plan for this colony on Mars, ship some number of large   
   >> reactors in pieces and assemble on Mars or ship lots of prebuilt small   
   >> reactors?   
   >   
   > When help is months or even years away, any single point of failure is   
   > your enemy, and redundancy is your friend.   
      
   agree!   
      
   each item has a probability of failure associated with it.   
   Call it Lambda   
      
   assume  you have  99.99% relibility on all components, and  you have   
   1000 components. the reliability of that system is only 90% ( 0.9999^1000 )   
      
   but you have 100,000 componnents at a minimum...   
   and with semi commertial components like Musk is proposing, you can get   
   perhaps 99%   
   which means your failure rate is greater than 99.999%   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)