“The power needs will be dramatically reduced now that life support is gone, so we’ll dump three of the five batteries and the auxiliary power system. The orbital maneuvering system has three redundant thrusters. We’ll get rid of those. Also, the secondary and tertiary comm systems can go.” “Wait, what?” Venkat said, shocked. “You’re going to have a remote-controlled ascent with no backup comm systems?” “No point,” Bruce said. “If the comm system goes out during ascent, the time it takes to reacquire will be too long to do any good. The backups don’t help us.”
