This endless preciosity of specification was necessary. In relation to their equipment, the trip was not unique, but merely another store of information in the continuing line of missions from the past which would lead toward expeditions in the future. So everything was important—the malfunctions in the oxygen transducer, and the glare from the foil wrappings of the Lem, the time it took the waste-water cloud to disperse, and the hours they slept, the unexpected reactions of the computer. Everything was important.
