Posted by Gerry Smith on March 08, 2001 at 16:00:25:
In Reply to: Re: what goes up must come down, in aviation ... posted by Max Bottomtime on March 08, 2001 at 15:39:15:
Max,
I think you misunderstood. Redundancy reduces the chance of failure. So DIR requires two regs, two sources of buoyancy etc.
If a specific reg has a probability of failure on a dive of 1 in 100 (P = .01) then the chance of failure of EITHER reg in a fully redundant system WOULD be 2 in 100 BUT you only need 1 reg at a time. So you worry about a catastrophic failure. The chance that BOTH would fail on the same dive would be 1 in 10,000 (.01 X .01 = .0001.) Yeah, I know it's anal, but in some things (like diving) that's important.
FWIW,
GS