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Did anyone else on techwr-l watch the live coverage of
the NASA shuttle Atlantis docking with the MIR space
station around 9:50 Central time last Friday night?
About that time, we (the tv audience) did not have video from inside
Atlantis, but we had audio. After the docking, the
astronauts had some procedures to follow before actually
opening the link between Atlantis and MIR. During this
time, they broadcast a conversation between Houston and the
shuttle that went something like this:
Houston: "Perform steps 6 through 12 on page
1-26, then turn back two pages and perform step
2a on page 1-24. Do you copy?
Atlantis: "(Long silence) That was step 6 on
page ..."
They repeated the instructions a couple of times before
they finally got a "copy" from Atlantis.
Comment: As my husband and I listened to this, we thought
these were terribly confusing instructions. I wondered
if the documentation was very poorly written. Why was
an important procedure starting on Step 6? Why did the
procedure include going back two pages in the middle of
the procedure?
This was a great example of documentation in use, live,
during a major event, and to me it put a negative spot light
on the procedure writers.
Does anyone here have a guess as to why it was written
this way?
Food for thought from
LaVonna
PS: My quotes may not be exact, but they give the general
idea of the situation. Feel free to correct me if you also heard the
broadcast.
LaVonna F. Funkhouser lffunkhouser -at- halnet -dot- com
COREComm Webmaster webmaster -at- corecomm -dot- com
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