I ran across this site on the net and thought others might be intrested. It is some articles about the development of the SSME's. I personally liked the section about the startup sequence of the engines.
http://www.enginehistory.org/ssme.htm
Most interesting indeed. Thx for the link :)
I like it too ... now, I'll just need to take a day off from work to read it all !!! ::)
Thanks
Let me add to this, one about the history and reliability of the shuttles flight control computers (GPC's)
It's amazing to read how their laptops get fried on orbit do to memory errors from radiation over time, yet the GPC's have memory scrubbers to ignore radiation changed values:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyfeature_shuttlecomputers.html (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyfeature_shuttlecomputers.html)