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This is agile at work. Using existing UDP/IP or SMTP (store and download like email) for the communications protocols for space missions. Duh! Why create a whole new comm networks for each mission when you can by a TCP/IP stack on any cellphone. This is my agile argument for me: After reinventing this wheel at least four times by the early 1990s, Hogie came to understand the power of the Internet Protocol. IP is the lingua franca for data communications. It's not just the way bits are packaged for transmission on the Internet but also how they are routed from machine to machine. As happens all the time on the Internet, two computer systems using

wildly different hardware a Hewlett-Packard PDA and an IBM mainframe, say can pass the data back and forth, so long as they both speak IP. And this should tell you something. With littlforethoughtht and now extra programming: To prove how powerful this concept of using IP in space could be, the Goddard team set up a log-in accounta user name and a password for some colleagues at the Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Ala., so they, too, could access the ill-fated shuttle's computer. Without a standard TCP/IP connection, Marshall might have had to commission someone like Hogie to write the software that would make the connections to give access to its engineers. But with TCP/IP, accessing the shuttle was as easy as using an AOL account. Once logged on, technicians could upload or download files, check the logs to see how the onboard server was running, or do anything else the staff at Goddard could do. This is what agile (and common sense) can do for you. Remembereber, the best solution is sometimes the hardest, but it is never the stupidest. (you can quote me on that) Thanks to Nasawatch.com and Keith Cowling for pointing out this article...