Once again I was peering into the chasm where the bedrock truth of the hard data—the math and the physics—did not hold the answer. They are incredibly precise, but they are merely the tools we use to build our models, so you can’t blame them when the model fails. In this case the only way forward was to exercise those particularly human capacities of engineering judgment, and maybe Spidey sense, as well as an activity called risk leveling, which is the essence of Entry, Descent, and Landing.
