NASA mission managers not only wanted Discovery, launched on Dec. 17, back in its hanger with all systems powered down by Dec. 31. They also want all the computers at Mission Control in Houston and at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida turned off before the calendar rollover. NASA said it does not expect any Y2K problems but officials said recently they did not want to take any chances either. Other experts still worry about potential trouble from the bug. The fear is that some computers might succumb to the Y2K problem, where programs using double-digit dates like 97 might trip over the zeros in 2000, reading it as 1900.
Some experts see trouble in places where rickety technology is typical.
Others claim that even America cannot rest easy. Beaver is concerned about China, particularly its civil air traffic control and power stations. BCS Consulting, in a report published this week, sees problems in Russia, but it includes countries like the United States and Britain, generally thought to be in the forefront of the fight against the Y2K bug, in its red for danger category. BCS said this category is for Y2K failure which could have an immediate effect on business life and therefore local society. The United States and Britain, leaders in Y2K remediation, also rely more on computer networks than others, BCS said.