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Due to this page http://www.baesystems.com/en/c... they are pretty much screwed any where in the world, when that page hits the court.

The page specifically states that it is for "Careers in the UK". Last time I checked, the state of Massachusetts was not part of the United Kingdom... It hasn't been ruled by English overlords for over 200 years. ;-)

This is the US Benefits Page. Note that there is no "take care of dying wife" leave, but there is "bereavement" leave for *after* she dies. :-O

The point is that the benefits in the UK are minimal by UK standards, so it is reasonable to infer that they will also be minimal by US standards in the US too.

For instance, 27 days annual leave probably sounds like some sort of mad socialist dream to most US readers, but even the stingiest of employers here will give you 20 days + bank (public) holidays).

Due to this page http://www.baesystems.com/en/c... they are pretty much screwed any where in the world, when that page hits the court.

The page specifically states that it is for "Careers in the UK". Last time I checked, the state of Massachusetts was not part of the United Kingdom... It hasn't been ruled by English overlords for over 200 years. ;-)

This is the US Benefits Page. Note that there is no "take care of dying wife" leave, but there is "bereavement" leave for *after* she dies. :-O

The point is that the benefits in the UK are minimal by UK standards, so it is reasonable to infer that they will also be minimal by US standards in the US too.

For instance, 27 days annual leave probably sounds like some sort of mad socialist dream to most US readers, but even the stingiest of employers here will give you 20 days + bank (public) holidays).

Due to this page http://www.baesystems.com/en/c... they are pretty much screwed any where in the world, when that page hits the court.

The page specifically states that it is for "Careers in the UK". Last time I checked, the state of Massachusetts was not part of the United Kingdom... It hasn't been ruled by English overlords for over 200 years. ;-)

This is the US Benefits Page. Note that there is no "take care of dying wife" leave, but there is "bereavement" leave for *after* she dies. :-O

Due to this page http://www.baesystems.com/en/c... they are pretty much screwed any where in the world, when that page hits the court.

The page specifically states that it is for "Careers in the UK". Last time I checked, the state of Massachusetts was not part of the United Kingdom... It hasn't been ruled by English overlords for over 200 years. ;-)

This is the US Benefits Page. Note that there is no "take care of dying wife" leave, but there is "bereavement" leave for *after* she dies. :-O

Due to this page http://www.baesystems.com/en/c... they are pretty much screwed any where in the world, when that page hits the court. False advertising, contractual misrepresentation and employment under false conditions. Why they chose this path, in this incident, is likely indicated of poor hiring practices, specifically the human resources twit, who will likely be looking for a new job (one rush of ego and power trip and millions of dollars of recruiting advertising pissed against the wall). That BAE have to self promote extensively to hire people into Death industries, is pretty indicative of unpopular working for them has become, if affect making their employees death eaters (oddly apt for them, http://scifi.stackexchange.com... and they sick desire to fully control the deaths of others). It really is a crap industry, surviving on the death and misery on others but they like to tell themselves they provide for the defence of their country. Nah, just greedy and a lack of self conscious though to guide them past the immorality of their employment.

Puts me in two minds about the victim, when employees or ex-employees of death industries want us to be sorry for them when they show not the slightest bit of sympathy or empathy for the people their efforts mangle, main and kill, men, women and children and even their pets. Like all things a choice but not empathy for others in your employment choice but you demand empathy. Might be a bit harsh but when those death industries actively and corruptly promote war, and lobby for more conflict with complete disregard for all those they kill, you have to start looking at their employees in a different way, even when you are related.

Start of the list of things to block (host-domain names) & cutting javascript-> https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... & here are the rest (finally):

NOPE - can't do it... you can THANK the fools here for restricting my post length or characters per line STUPIDITY FILTERS they put in so you have to get them yourself now... thanks a lot, Logan Abott (you idiot).

APK

P.S.=> I feel the same as you do, but I learned you have to dig PAST the 'std. fare' articles in the news many times & go STRAIGHT to the horses' mouth for better more detailed info here (1st link is the FULL technical readout) https://resources.baesystems.c... ... apk

Because there are two constants in today's economy: data and weapons. Nobody ever went broke selling either.

I refer you to BAE Systems' recent contracts and the fact that people still sell CDROM discs full of verified email addresses.

http://www.baesystems.com/en/a... (£1.3Bn for a nuclear submarine)
http://www.b2b-bl.com/?p=220 (B2B Spam and why opt-in lists work about as well as opt-out).

Just an FYI on BAE. They have research and production facilities in the United States. They bought a bunch of old IBM buildings in Manassas, VA for one. Also, off-shoring to the UK is about the same cost to an employer as a U.S. hire as far as pay and fringes go, but then you have the cost of remote employee interactions.

For instance with tanks, if you make them drive-by-wire and you make the computer control system small enough, you can just pull the computer when you're done with the tank and take it with you.

Of course, the enemy could counter this in several ways. They could jerry-rig the tank to work minimally without a control system, but it would not be nearly as effective. They could steal the control computer, but that's a security issue - the key components should be under lock and key and heavy guard. Or they could steal the control software and load it on a smartphone or something, but that's again a security issue. And all of these require more technical knowledge than hot-wiring a car.

The RAD750 is quite limited in power; but has the advantage of being comparatively close to 'just going down to newegg and buying a motherboard' by the standards of projects that go into space and shop at mil/aero contractors... The price is still up in the "If you have to ask, don't ask" range; but doing a very-low-volume DIY would likely be worse still...

Space Micro doesn't list the prices of their components or systems, nor can I find any from anyone else. Honeywell don't list their prices either. Atmel seem to have dropped out of the field. Linear don't list the prices for their space-hardened stuff. Don't see any for BAE either, or Intersil. Empire Magnetics require a lot of personal data before they give you access to even the price classification information. Not the prices, just how they're classified.

You've got to allow for a year's worth of traveling outside of an atmosphere and then operating on Mars for the duration of the mission. This analysis of radiation for manned missions suggests you're looking at 3.5 mSv per day, then 20 rems per year in most of the places of interest.

Converting everything to rads, it's 0.1 rads per mSv and 1 rad per rem, so that's 12.75 rads to get to Mars if you assume a year-long trip, plus 20 rads for the mission, so anything with a rating of less than 32.75 rads is pretty much guaranteed to fail. However, over the course of a two years, the odds of there being a solar flare are not insignificant. To be safe, you want resistance to a further 400 rad. 432.75 rad is within the tolerance of most of the space-hardened components (some components can be taken up to 1000 rad, others up to 10,000). However, the cheapest space components would NOT survive. You're talking high-end on the space scale.

I'm going to figure that the top-line components will cost 100x that of their conventional counterparts, due to the higher-level of precision and QA that are required. It might well be a good deal more. In Russia, you've also got to pay for smuggling decent-grade hardware out of the US, as all of this stuff will be under massive amounts of regulation.

My guess is that the cuts would have saved enough that those doing the cost-cutting could buy second homes in Switzerland.

BAE Systems did this in 2006: http://www.baesystems.com/Businesses/SharedServices/Divisions/AdvancedTechnologyCentre/FeatureArchive/bae_ss_atc_geckoglue.html

Well these aren't the only projects of this type. What about BAE System's Railgun?

With a prototype delivered to the Navy back in 2009.

Because of dickheads using laser pointers to lase aircraft on final approach to air ports I have to get a permit to buy a 10mW, 20mW or 30mW green laser for astronomy purposes ... and now you're producing something to intentionally lase people.

Assholes.

Most rad hardened CPUs are RISC (powerPC, SPARC), there are very few options for x86 based rad hardened CPUs. Mil-spec wise Intel is doing well with their newer stuff (dual-core, etc.), but none of it has made it to the rad hardened world yet. The RAD750 is pretty much 'state of art', running at 166MHz.

Replacing an old 486 with one of these would require rewriting / compiling all the code running on them. Probably not enough of a performance gain in relation to the cost / risk of basically rewriting the code base from scratch.

As for the air traffic control issue there is no reason that ATC cannot control a UAV in the way that they contol other aircraft in civilian airspace - but instead of talking to it on the radio, send it a message to change course/altitude. There are already standard systems for controlling piloted aricraft (automated landings etc.) No reason why similar systems cannot be used on UAVs.

Actually, as indicated earlier, they've been testing systems in New York City using another regenerative braking system called HybriDrive from these folks...

No idea if the BAE system has the "70%" conversion rate of this one or not.

XTS-400 (Wikipedia entry)

XTS-400

That particular system is rated at EAL 5. IBM's only achieved EAL 4.

A couple of points. 1) Phase Change memory chips are already commercially available from BAE. One of the advantages of PCM not mentioned in the Intel announcement is radiation tolerance. BAE has been selling PCM for space applications since last summer. Rumor is they cannot keep up with demand. See: http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/20 06/autoGen_10703020214.html 2) All of the memory manufacturers are licensing the basic tech from Energy Conversion Devices. It all derives from Stan Ovshinsky's patent number 5,166,758 more than a decade ago. Check it out. Disclosure: I own some ECD stock. Dag

"All our people will be encouraged to realise their full potential as valued members of the team... We will strive to be the partner of choice, respected by everyone for our co-operation and openness... We will encourage a hunger for new ideas, new technologies and new ways of working" - Vision and Values

In many areas France and the UK are ahead of the game in naval technology. For example electrical propulsion which is how most naval vessels will be powered in the future (The engines are large electrical motors, in pods rather than directly driven. quieter, more flexible and more maneuverable). The latest british destroyer(Type 45) has this technology and is so ahead of the game that it will probably be the basis of the propulsion technology for the american DD(X) ships. There is no reason to belive that France and UK does not have the technology, what they probably do lack is the operational experience on how to use the systems.

It recieves no free handouts of operating cash, no below market rate loans, etc from the government.

For the A380 program Airbus received one third of the development costs as credits from the governments of the involved countries. They are repayable including market interest rates, but I guess depending on the success of the program.

Airbus, on the other hand, is owned by its member governments,

80% of Airbus is owned by EADS, the rest by BAE Systems. EADS is partly owned by the French government (below 30%), the major owner is DaimlerChrysler (30%), another third is free floating. For BAESystems I didn't find the info on their site, but I found the information that about 50% is in foreign (=non-British) hands, so BAE Systems is surely not owned by the British government.

started with capital from those governments

The Airbus consortium was not 'started' with government money, it was a consortium founded by the respective companies (surely with a political motivation). It is founded on much older companies, like MBB.

and gets low/no interest and/or outright gift grants to develop new planes, including the 380

I think I already adressed that...

Unfortunately, radiation hardening a processor involves altering the fabrication process (some processes - e.g. SOI - are more resistant to bit flips than others), inserting guard rings, adding self-checking logic, and a bunch of other changes. Doing all of this stuff takes time (and money) so space-ready processors typically lag COTS processors by a generation or two. Example: the current "hot new" rad-hard processor is the RAD750, which is a rad-hard version of the venerable PowerPC 750.

Having said all of that, some small, risk-tolerant missions do use standard COTS processors (PowerPCs and StrongARMs are popular, as are industrial embedded processors like the Hitachi SuperH line). But you won't tend to find them in most NASA projects.

I saw a demo of a military version of this in 2001. They use 3 odd looking floor-based mics, hooked up to a Powerbook running some kind of *nix software which triangulated the sound on a map. Version 2 was meant to indentify what kind of artillery it was you were hearing. The company was BAE.

They're using RAD6000 processors which are modified chips used to run old Macs from the early nineties. Each rover has 384 megabytes of RAM, the extra 256 is for images.
The operating system is VxWorks.

No. Its a RAD6000 CPU. Not entierly your stock PowerPC chip.
RAD6000

No, they're not.

The processors in MER are RAD6000's, which are radiation-hardened versions of the RS/6000, the predecessor to the PowerPC (see this for details). The RAD6000's younger brother, the RAD750, is indeed a rad-hardened PowerPC.

As an aside, there is a big difference between a radiation-shielded processor and a radiation-hardened processor. Shielding implies just sticking some kind of rad-absorbent material between the processor and the environment. A rad-hardened processor is actually manufactured in a different way - different gate layout, different design rules, often different materials (Silicon-on-Insulator is popular). These things are done to minimize or prevent the effects of single-event upsets (when a bit is flipped by high-energy particles) and single-event latchups (which basically turn a couple of gates into a glorified short-to-ground). The materials changes may also improve the overall total dose tolerance of the processor. The work required for redesign is one of the reasons that space-qualified rad-hard processors lag the commercial market. The NASA Office of Logic Design has some good papers on space processors available online if you're interested in learning more.

No, they're not.

The processors in MER are RAD6000's, which are radiation-hardened versions of the RS/6000, the predecessor to the PowerPC (see this for details). The RAD6000's younger brother, the RAD750, is indeed a rad-hardened PowerPC.

As an aside, there is a big difference between a radiation-shielded processor and a radiation-hardened processor. Shielding implies just sticking some kind of rad-absorbent material between the processor and the environment. A rad-hardened processor is actually manufactured in a different way - different gate layout, different design rules, often different materials (Silicon-on-Insulator is popular). These things are done to minimize or prevent the effects of single-event upsets (when a bit is flipped by high-energy particles) and single-event latchups (which basically turn a couple of gates into a glorified short-to-ground). The materials changes may also improve the overall total dose tolerance of the processor. The work required for redesign is one of the reasons that space-qualified rad-hard processors lag the commercial market. The NASA Office of Logic Design has some good papers on space processors available online if you're interested in learning more.

Does anyone know what the deal was with the flash memory that caused the outage? I heard something about a "solar event" that caused a problem with the flash memory that led to the outage. It was subsequently resolved by disabling the flash. If so, BAE Aerospace has a possible solution with their upcoming line of rad-hard memory.

I wonder what cpu is used on the rovers..

They use a radiation-hardened RAD6000 32-bit RISC chip made by BAE Systems. See their Press Release here. Bookmark the page in the link below.

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

I wonder what cpu is used on the rovers..

They use a radiation-hardened RAD6000 32-bit RISC chip made by BAE Systems. See their Press Release here. Bookmark the page in the link below.

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

RAD6000 6U Compact PCI page at BAE Systems.

It's not great, but there are more detailed links around the BAE website.

It doesn't list how the FLASH is connected; that's not a standard built-in on the RAD6000 computer. I would guess, hung off the FPGA interface device, but I don't know that for sure.

If anyone's curious about the CPU used by the rovers, it's one of the POWER derived radiation hardened chips made by BAE Systems. While it's PPC based, it's more similar to a family of CPUs that split off even before the first of the Mac PPCs, the 601. Similar operating speed and power, however, as the first of those.

The newer PPC based space capable CPUs are RAD750s, which are directly related to the G3 PPC powering iMacs and iBooks.

While on the topic of space hardware, and going back to photograph mercury, what kind of camera equipment was used to take images of the moon and mars in the 1960s/1970s? I was told by an English teacher that each photo was snapshotted on film, then exposed in a small photoprocessing lab inside the probes, and scanned to send back to earth as there was no possibility of capturing fast moving images on CCD that far back. I think that sounds a bit of wishful thinking urban legend. Anyone know for sure?

thanks

Actually, the RAD6000 is derived from an RS/6000 (predecessor to the PowerPC). Its newer cousin, the RAD750 rad-hardened processor, is based on one of the older PowerPC models, but has not actually (AFAIK) been flown in space yet.

Actually, the RAD6000 is derived from an RS/6000 (predecessor to the PowerPC). Its newer cousin, the RAD750 rad-hardened processor, is based on one of the older PowerPC models, but has not actually (AFAIK) been flown in space yet.

It's a language difference: US "afterburner" and "supercruise" are UK "reheat" and "dry power". Try here for instance.

BAE SYSTEMS is a UK company that has a section operating in the US.

BAE SYSTEMS make commercial and military equipment for the UK govenment.

Check your facts!

Yeah. There's no way BAE systems would ever invest $40 million in production facilities for the Joint Strike fighter.

Oh.

Back to your bridge, troll.

Here is the CELLDAR teaming site for BAE Systems and Roke Maynor Research and here is the official BAE systems news about CELLDAR.

Check out...

G4 PowerPC processor
MIPS R3000 Mongoose
Pentium III/4
RAD6000 variant of IBM's RS/6000

Up until about 4 years ago, I used to work for a major/small satellite company. One of my last tasks was to update the processor board used in many satellites... you guessed it, it was based on the 8086. What was my upgrade? I added an 8087 to it! These math coprocessors are even rarer - we bought the last 50 bare die in existence to eventually custom-package in a special high-density radiation shielding ceramic package.

It was about that time that I decided that the company was going in the hole. It's not that the 8086's were particularily good processors... True, they are made with a bigger geometry and suck more power -- things that make them generally more radiation resistant than anything produced in the 1990's. But, they were never designed to tolerate radiation. (NASA isn't stupid - they have high-performance radiation tolerant parts like the RAD6000).

Since my company wasn't making even minimal internal investments (they had a '386 based system that they built but never applied power), I decided that, for my career, I should leave. I notice now that they are hiring people with 5 years of PowerPC experience -- eventually they must have decided to get with the times, but since they didn't keep their employees current, they shot themselves in the foot and now have to hire outsiders.

p.s. I'm back on the job market - anyone need a kick-ass PowerPC engineer? :)

Fine. Go find a processor that's space qualified and yet capable of doing this sort of thing reliably. Most embedded platforms won't survive the radiation, let alone the head conduction problems...

It's true that you probably don't want to use off the shelf CPUs in deep space (though many of them will do acceptably well; the typical deep space radiation environment is not so bad, if you don't fly during high solar flare times and can put up with a few resets from time to time). But there are plenty of space-rated components for those who know where to look and have the $$$. It's not bleeding edge, but it's not that far back either.

The article fails to give a url for "Matra BAe Dynamics" which are the producers of this new emp weapon.

I did some internet research and found "BAE Systems" which seem to be the guys mentioned in the article.

The URL is http://www.baesystems.com/

cheers
mike