Space Shuttle Displays Go Glass

cloudscout writes: "NASA has finally decided to bring the space shuttle up to date with a 'glass cockpit.' Until now, the space shuttle cockpit has used a system of gauges and dials designed in the early 70's. They now have full-color computer displays and controls. Pictures and details are available in this article at WESH Channel 2000. So how long until someone ports MAME to this thing?" Can anyone shed light on what sort of operating system will drive all those screens?

Comments

plexiglass

[maddurbation]

what they really need is plexiglass cockpits...ahhh. imagine it. mmmmm

Microsoft Space Shuttle (TM)

[cam_macleod]

Glass screens, full colour, brand new... it's obviously Windows CE. Or Pocket Windows. Or whatever it's called this week.

NASA Administrator: "Sure, we want a calendar and a phone list in Atlantis -- but what about videos and MP3s??"

NASA Worker: "Uhh, I'll get right on that."

NASA Administrator: "Can you put in that paperclip thing too?"
- Cam MacLeod

Re:Microsoft Space Shuttle (TM)

[Ravagin]

Hm. It could be Palm OS 3.5...Isn't that what's running on the Palm IIIc?
;)

Re:Microsoft Space Shuttle (TM)

[Hogarth the Mime]

If anyone believes that NASA would use a Microsoft product, they should be sent to pluto without a life support system. According to http://www.metrolink.com/metrox/ess.html, the shuttle uses a metro-X, a fancy hack of X windows that supports all sorts of wacky input devices, running over a newish Linux kernel. Windows CE running the shuttle? For shame!

-1:redundant

[waddgodd]

this was in the same news story as the Shuttle going up to tow the ISS. The "glass cockpit" is being live tested on the mission. We gotta have a way to moderate stories as well as comments.

Re:-1:redundant

[matthewg]

Sir, you have given me quite a fright. I originally parsed "ISS" as "IIS". *shudder*...

Why retrofit these things?

[Grant Elliott]

First of all, the shuttles are supposed to be replaced within a few years (hopefully). Secondly, I can think of a lot of other things that should be updated first. Anyone know how the computer system onboard works?

There are five computers- with tape drives! The tapes aren't big enough to hold everything, so there are seperate tapes for take-off, landing, orbit, etc. The tapes need to be changed by hand on the first four machines. The fifth machine is permanently running the emergency landing routine. If one of the first four computers disagrees with the others, it is shut down. If the shuttle is ever down to two computers, the fifth machine kicks in and takes the next available landing window- with or without anyone onboard. It's never happened.

I always assumed the reason that the system never got updated was because they were planning on replacing the shuttles soon. Makes you wonder how confident NASA is about the X-33.

(This information is a few years old. Anyone know if NASA has upgraded the computers yet?)

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[Grant Elliott]

I just looked at the picture. They must have done some serious retrofiting. I seriously doubt they could run all that off the old computers. This probably cost a pretty penny...

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[luge]

For better or for worse, they aren't getting rid of them anytime soon. I can't back this up with links, but I know I've read at least one article recently that mentioned new engines and fuel tanks. And I know the frames were built to last 30-40 years, which would mean 2010-2020.
~luge

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[Spyky]

First of all, the shuttles are supposed to be replaced within a few years (hopefully).

Nope. The video in the link says that the glass cockpit is just one of the updates to make the shuttles last for another 20 years (been about 20 already).

Maybe they will build a new shuttle in the meantime, but the ones we have now (Atlantis, Columbia...) will stay in service.

Spyky

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[j-pimp]

Well I am also of the understanding that all nasa computers that go into space are powered byc 286's. Apparently they're the only things that don't get screwed up by cosmic rays. S If this is the case then I assume hardrives have similar problems. Although this does pose a problem if Slashdot ever aqquires a space shuttle. Commander Taco would be forced to become a minix guru.

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[cybermage]

They're retrofiting these things because they're trying to run a business.

Retrofiting accomplishes all of the following tasks:
1. More press coverage.
2. Provides a back-up if the new vehicles don't work right at first.
3. Provides additional payload capacity.

Besides, what are we gonna use after we wreck the X-33s blowing up a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

--

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[Aerowolf]

The reason the 286s are in there is because the shuttles were built in the mid-70s. It was cutting edge stuff back then, and they've served perfectly well ever since. There is little reason to spend the millions of dollars to upgrade (since mission control, both in Fla and Tx, must also be upgraded) unless safety becomes an issue. The new glass cockpits are part of that. Besides, the new stuff is 70 lbs lighter, which cuts launch costs by $700,000.

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[Detritus]

The main computers in the Shuttle are IBM AP-101S computers. The AP-101S is a member of the IBM 360/370 family of computers.

The problem with hard drives is their fragility. They are too sensitive to vibration and hostile environmental conditions. Tape drives have been successfully flying on spacecraft for decades.

The Space Station was using radiation hardened 80386 chips the last time I checked.

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[CharBoy]

The MEDS upgrade includes an Analog/Digital converter which allows the video signals sent to the old CRTs to be displayed on the LCD units. All new computing takes place within the LCD units themselves (for switching between available displays). As far as the old flight computers are concerned, they are still hooked up to the old analog TV tubes that they were designed for.

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[CharBoy]

Actually, the Shuttle airframes are theoretically rated for 100 flights each. Since the shuttle fleet has just passed the 100th mission mark, the fleet is approximately one quarter of the way through their lifespan.

The STS was originally intended to be a 'space truck' each orbiter doing maybe 10+ missions a year. When it became clear that was an absolutely unrealistic number, the story was switched that the Shuttle was in fact a test-bed for the technologies that would make the second-generation shuttle the real space-truck.

The VentureStar, the vehicle the X-33 is a technology demonstrator for, will be built and owned commercially, not by NASA. NASA will purchase cargo-space on the new vehicle, but they will actually be owned by Lockmart (Lockheed-Martin) or whoever else decides to build them.

The MEDS upgrade is a logical next step in maintaining the shuttle until a replacement launcher is available. It will reduce maintenance costs, increase performance, increase safety, and make the shuttle fleet better vehicles overall until it is retired.

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be this misconception that NASA actually produces most of the hardware that goes into space. In reality NASA does next to nothing in house. They subcontract jobs out to Boeing (the entire ISS program), Hamilton Sundstrandt(Space suit/EMU), Lockheed, etc, who in turn subcontracts to hundreds of other companies. Each contract for a program pretty much does his own thing, the result is that you can't make a statement like, all nasa computers that go into space are 286s. If you took a poll today, you would probably see that the rad6000 is the most common chip going into space today and there are probably more Z80s floating around then all the others combined. Bottom line is that for the most part, each sub contractor decides what to put into space. There really aren't all that many choices tho.

Re: Why retrofit these things?

[mperrin]

There's a very good reason for not upgrading the shuttle's computers: They don't need it.

Think about it. How many other computer systems can you think of that have been running for the last twenty years? How many other systems have had the tens of thousands of hours of testing and, even more importantly, have worked flawlessly every time? The shuttle computers work. They have never failed in flight, period. Some new system? Hah. We all know how solid most applications are today. The above jokes about running CE on this shuttle show that for sure. ;-) The shuttle today does fundamentally the same thing it did twenty years ago; the calculations needed for launch and landing haven't changed. So why replace the most tested piece of code in the world with something new? Would you like to ride in the first flight with brand new software? Thought not.

Next question: So then why upgrade the displays? Partly it's economic - those bulky old dials weigh a lot, and it's still ten kilobucks a pound to LEO. Beyond that, the interface can be made far better and more adaptable than anything you can do with gauges and switches in hardware. Anything that can be done to make the pilot's life easier is a net win. They way they did it, they basically put in a new system which takes the data and runs the displays, leaving the main computers pretty much untouched, running the same ol' rock-solid code.

Another point about the backup system. As Detritus posted elsewhere, the four main machines all run a program called PASS, the Primary Avionic Software System , while the fifth computer runs BFS, the Backup Flight System. These two programs were written by completely independent groups of programmers. To this day, no one who has worked on one of them is allowed to ever see the code for the other. They're completely indepentent. The idea behind this is called "diverse design". The more dissimilar two systems are, the more improbably it becomes that both will fail at the same time. They originally wanted to have totally different hardware for the backup too, but that was nixed to save on costs. Lastly, the backup system most certainly doesn't kick in automatically, under any circumstances. It's the mission commander's call, whether to hit the big red button on the control stick or not. (And yes, it actually is a big red button.) The designers judged that it was better to keep a human in charge than blindly trust the software.

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[Sensei_knight]

NASA dosn't want to save money, they'll just proclaim, "now we can carry 70lbs more shit".

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[madstork2000]

I read someplace that Intel donates the old x86 technology to the government for use in space vehicals. I do not believe they donate hardware, just give them a free liscense to use the x86 chip set.

Sandia National Labs was tagged to do the hardening for the Pentium series of chips, though I don't know where they stand with it.

see www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN1 2-18-98/intel_story.htm

There or those really curious I suggest a trip to google search for "radiation hardened pentium"

-MS2k

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[kzinti]

The tapes aren't big enough to hold everything, so there are seperate tapes for take-off, landing, orbit, etc. The tapes need to be changed by hand on the first four machines.

This isn't correct. There are two tape drives called Mass Memory Units (MMUs); each has an identical copy of the flight software, both PASS and BFS. The drives are physically separate units from the GPCs; for the sake of redundancy, they communicate across separate data buses. All five GPCs share the same two MMUs.

The tapes in the MMUs are large enough to hold all the flight software for the different phases of the mission. These separate programs are called "Ops modes". There is an ops mode for each mission phase: OPS 1 for Ascent, OPS 2 for Orbit, OPS 3 for Entry/Landing. There are some other modes, but these are the significant ones.

The tapes do not have to be changed during the mission, but an crew member must manually enter the command for the ops mode transitions. Within an ops mode, the flight software can make its own transitions between program phases -- these are called "major mode transitions" and don't require an access to the MMU.

I'm not a FSW expert, but I've spent the last two+ years writing GPC emulators, so I've become familiar with some of these concepts.

--Jim

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[j-pimp]

I believe it was 86 but I'm not sure

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[rhaig]

actually sts-101 is the 98th Shuttle mission.

You can check the sts-101 mission page to check my facts it you'd like.

But, yes this still means they are about 1/4 of the way through their lifespan.

Re: Why retrofit these things?

[millette]

I remember an article about the Hubble Space Telescope being upgraded last year with an Intel 486 processor. Google has a few links, the funny and the seriou s.

Re: Why retrofit these things?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your remark about the independence of the PASS and BFS holds for the code, but I know for a fact that both systems use the same guidance algorithm (Powered Explicit Guidance, PEG for short) for both PASS and BFS second stage (post SRB sep) and ascent obort guidance.

Anonymous Me
(Damn, I can't find my password & I've tossed my cookies...)

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[Chandon Seldon]

Besides, what are we gonna use after we wreck the X-33s blowing up a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

Another X-33.

Compared to what a shuttle costs, the X-33's are free.

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[SEWilco]

Um.. One shuttle was removed from the fleet. You have to subtract its flights from the total before you divide by the size of the fleet.

Re:Why retrofit these things?

[feydakin]

And of course charge for the space.. Actually 'earning' a few more dollars per flight that normally would have been spent on lifting the old tech..

The Display

[Anonymous Coward]

I think all the shuttle displays are done by a company in Albany; they use a Photon drawstream without QNX's rendering libraries. I don't think that most of the companies producing these technologies are allowed to be named due to their contract with government.

The shuttle requirements are high; they need a mission critical OS with real time performance for *many* of the systems. Good for QNX, bad for M$. :)

It's a case of both security through obscurity and the government not wanting to be known for publically endorsing one vendor over another. (What would be the impact if we heard that the government started using linux or microsoft over QNX?)

Re:The Display

[Broken Bottle]

OK, I know this is off topic, but can someone answer a question for me that was spurred by this post? What the heck is a "real time" OS? And how does it differ froma Linux or Windows? just curious, Chris

Re:The Display

[Troed]

So called "real time" operating systems (not getting into "soft" and "hard" real time now) are systems with a defined maximum time taken for any task. That means that you can _guarantee_ that a scheduled task _will_ execute within a certain timeframe.

I.e, impossible for _any_ process to deadlock the system, no matter what.

Not that many operating systems are true RT ... Linux isn't, Windows most certainly isn't .. ;)

Re:The Display

[larkost]

There are a lot of OS's that are true real-time OS's, but they are ones that you never directly interact with. A lot of the phone switches run them, your car's engine may run on another, they are present in a lot of medical equipment, they run most of the heavy industrial equipment, are the driving force in most aircraft avionics, and they are staring to make their way into things like digital televisions.

Each RTOS is fairly stupid, they do one things really, really well, and basicaly nothing else. Because the goals in mind are so limited they can be so small that one person can understand everything about them, and predict how they will react in any circumstance (devide by zero is the most common example). They usually have little to no user interface, or have one that is contained in a program that runs on top of them, that way if something goes wrong, it can be restarted without interfering with the main job that the OS is built to do, whatever that may be.

To make a usefull comparison, geralized OS's (such as Win9x, WinNT, Linux, Digital UNIX, MacOS, etc..) are like the CPU's they run on; they are big, complex, and can do almost anything, but are great at nothing. In comparison RTOS's are like math co-prosessors, DSP's, or graphics chips; they do one thing really well, much better than their generalizd brethern, but are incapable of doing other things.

More cost cutting

[djrogers]

NASA refused to comment on the OS question, however one source has told me that they got a $7,600 savings thanks to a $400 per unit rebate from MSN.....

BSoD in Space

[maxmisch]

Hmm. If NASA installed a Win32 OS in the Atlantis shuttle, chances are, the astronauts on this upcoming mission will be the first to see the Blue Screen of Death (TM) from space. Though, they also might die in the process. HeH!

Re:BSoD in Space

[uncleFester]

Possibly not. Previous shuttle missions have had Thinkpads in use, and for some reason I think even a powerbook has gone on at least one mission.

Can't believe they've had laptops up there without experiencing that beautiful blue screen at least once... :)

Re:BSoD in Space

[maxmisch]

Yeah. It sure would be a terrible shame, right? If they hadn't yet experienced any BSoD aboard a shuttle, they wouldn't be able to suffer and endure the frustration which millions of computer users go through every day, right here on planet Earth.

Re:BSoD in Space

[maxmisch]

Right. That's what I was referring to when i said, "Though, they might die in the process."

That would suck for Bill Gates if the astronauts aboard one of these shuttles die because of a computer malfunction. But, then again, he has more money than God. So, it wouldn't matter much, anyway.

Re:BSoD in Space

[waldoj]

I'm trying to find some documentation of the following. Somebody (Geeknews, Slashdot...somebody) picked up the story a few months afterwards, but I don't remember who.

Anyhow, I was watching the NASA channel -- I don't remember the official name -- a few months back. It's cool -- just old tapes of missions, and a bunch of live broadcasts, too. So I'm watching this live broadcast of a recent mission. It's really cool -- you can see a map showing where the shuttle is in relation to the globe, as well as the latitude and longitude, as well as a camera shot from the shuttle. There was some other stuff, too. The screen was all divided up like Bloomberg.

Oh, and you can hear all of the radio transmissions, too. So I hear a woman on the shuttle say something about a computer problem, and could Mission Control help her out? She describes the problem to MC, and a tech helps out. She reads off the message on the screen, as well as on a printout. It's a BSOD. MC chuckles, and you can hear laughter in the background, and MC says to reboot the computer.

Now, because I have a wicked poor memory, could somebody validate this?

Anyhow, the point is this: God help them all if they're upgrading and still running Windows.

-Waldo

Re:BSoD in Space

[Mhicks]

The station is called NTV (yea I know, it is kinda lame, but they wanted to be cool and all). Currently the main computers on board are not Win computers, neither is the glass cockpit. They do have suplamentary computers and computers to run the experements that are Windows, usually laptops because they are completely unclosed in a nice SMALL package and they do not weigh much. The glass cockpit is really nice, I saw a report on NTV about, really cool stuff.

They are not dead yet, so whatever they are using must be working.

Re:BSoD in Space

[HerringFlavoredFowl]

a buggy OS used for mission critical systems...

Think Not!

Ever notice the life support clauses in most comercial compilers for non-realtime OS's?
the usual line in most microsoft end user agreements :

The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is not fault-tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which the failure of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.

Just do a search of the MS site for "life support". That one was ripped from the IE 4 end user agreement .

Sorry no wince powered porn sites for NASA...

TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

Re:BSoD in Space

[larkost]

Yes, this is very true! In fact the laptop computers that are regularly carried into space are far more powerfull than the shuttles main computers. And many of the shutle research missions could not be accomplished without them. But they are used for payload missions only! Nothing mission critical!

For the actuall running of the shuttle, the main computers, working in concert with the big computers a mission control, do the job every time. They are predicatable! No one dies because an obscuer error jump up at the wrong moment.

Re:BSoD in Space

[Zurk]

that line is fairly meaningless. ive seen netscape for irix (i kid you not!) running as part of a UK future command and control system/missile defense system demonstration at DERA. This is completely nuts - if they keyboard or mouse was to lock up thanks to netscape during a real missile defense, that would be the end of the system (or at least that terminal) and enemy missiles would likely get through or worse. The excuse for running netscape was that it could render images and data for the operator to identify the capabilities of enemy vehicles/missiles in real time.

Must be linux

[segfault7375]

Must be linux, because in space, no one can hear you scream.. when you blue screen :o)

Segfault

segfault@bellatlantic.net

Is this really a good thing?

[Skinka]

So they've used this old stuff for 19 years now. The technology has been throughly tested, NO WAY is it possible that there would be bug somewhere. Now I'm sure the engineers and programmers at NASA know their shit, but nevertheless there is risk (no matter how small) that this new system has some flaw in it.

Does this really bring so much new funtionality that the risk is worth taking?

Re:Is this really a good thing?

[luge]

I don't remember which platform it was (pretty sure it was Apollo, but maybe something later) that NASA required not just multiple copies of crucial software but multiple copies written completely independently, so that bugs in one copy would be visible when compared against the others.
~luge

Re:Is this really a good thing?

[Skinka]

The space shuttles are 20 years old, do you have any idea how little code they use? They have less than 100k of RAM if I remember correctly.

Re:Is this really a good thing?

[HerringFlavoredFowl]

This biggest problem with mission critical code is it needs to be designed arround the belief that every thing is going wrong other wise you end up being unable to handle any problems (aka : the mars polar lander).

Or am I the only geek that read more than the summary of the reports released on the loss...

TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

Re:Is this really a good thing?

[Obasan]

The reason for installing this new 'glass cockpit' is not merely so that shuttles can look all high-tech and cool. There have been constant complaints from shuttle pilots that the old control systems tended towards information overload. There was too much irrelevant data, and readings that were relevant were not prominent enough on the control panel. The new system will presumably have been designed to address this issue: the most relevant data to a given situation should be presented to the pilots on the display panels (presumably 'relevance' of data will be something which is decided by computer after a lot of simulations and consultations with shuttle pilots), while at the same time if they do need other data it should also be relatively quick and easy for them to access from the panels. Remember, by definition when they built the first shuttle nobody had flown it before. Now they have 20 years worth of shuttle pilots to consult in building a system that suits their needs precisely. Control systems can evolve, and should, just like everything else.

Re:Is this really a good thing?

[Troed]

True - also used in the aviation industry. Not only 3 programs written by different companies - they run on 3 types of different hardware, compiled with different compilers etc - just in case they would have a buggy chip or compiler in one of the systems ...

Neat, huh? :)

Shuttle still has core memory?

[kren2000]

So do the shuttles still have iron core memory? I remember that this choice was 1) made in the 1970s and 2) core memory is remarkably resistant to EM radiation, gamma rays, etc.

I also remember that the shuttle was apparently running on Z80 clones. Forget WinCE, they're still on CPM.... (which is more advanced that what runs under Win98).

Karen

Re:Shuttle still has core memory?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Z80 was and still is a workhorse for embedded space systems. The primary reason for this is that it was one of the few cpus that are available in a radiation hardened version. As of the early 90s, the rad6000(used in the mars rover, int space station, many others) from ibm has pretty much taken over that market. This is a first generation rs6000 that is radiation hardened. You can get this puppy at up to a whopping 35mghz. Lockheed Martix produces the development and flight boards for these for the resonable price of $30k and $300k a piece and it generally runs vxworks for the os. In the mid 90s intel introduced an i386 that was hardened and just recently a i486 (think hubble upgrade not so recently). The rad6000 is due for a much needed upgrade to a full blown power pc. It'll be nice to get some documentation for your $300k (i'm sure that'll go up with the upgrade ;) board that has a date that doesnt read 1990 on it ;) The main reason that they antiquated beasts are still in use is primary because compared to newer chips they drawing alot less power, and in the embedded world you can get away with it because you are generally doing 1 specific duty and will never have to compete for the cpu.

Re:Shuttle still has core memory?

[kcarnold]

Yeah, and a heckuva lot of people now know Z80 ASM. Why? Because the TI-82,83,83+,85, and 86 graphing calculators -- err, portable monochrome game consoles that you can sometimes use in math class -- have Z80s at their cores. See ticalc.org for some info.

MAME?

[phread]

Everything NASA does is done in-house.that's why their budget is 12 some billion and they manage so many shuttle launches a year. Like the time they built their own video camera for something like 180k for the shuttle and it didn't work and one of the crew hooked up a sony and it was amazing. This probably cost a half mil and could have been bought at radio shack and set up by a kid like Jason Fox for 1% of that.Typical.

the real issue is...

[DrEldarion]

how long until they can play Quake on that thing?

allright, I couldn't resist.

-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.

Re:the real issue is...

[Ravagin]

Actually, what with the joysticks and all, it might be a great system for first person or flight games...Mmmmm, X-Wing on the Space Shuttle...

Re:the real issue is...

[PolyDwarf]

And of course, the obligatory: Wow, when are they gonna run Linux?!?! Let's get a whole bunch of them up there and form a huge Beowolf cluster!!! How do they communicate? BlueTooth 2001!

Hmmm...

[Ravagin]

I think it's unlikely that Windows would be used. Stability issues aside, for a spaceship, you want the maximum ability for customization. I'm no Linux expert, but it sounds like it would be a good OS to use. And hey, we had that story earlier about building your own distro. That would be neat: NASA writing its own Linux distribution for the space shuttle
I'm just speculating, mind you. They could use Windows or DOS or something like that...and get all sorts of fun errors.

Life Support has caused an illegal operation and will be shut down.

c:\>Close bay doors
Bad command or file name.
c:\>Close "bay doors"
Too many parameters.
c:\>Close (bay doors)
Error reading bay doors.
Abort, Retry, Ignore?

[astronaut clicks on "Extend Landing Gear"]
Not enough memory to complete this operation. Close some programs and try again.

Oh dear....

They're running... OI-27!!!!... ?

[BMIComp]

As to what software it's running... it's software version OI-27. (According to the specs)

Now, I don't know exactly what it means.. but oh well. Maybe they just loaded one of the crays on there.. hehe.

ShuttleOS: 1 bug in 420,000 lines

[MikeApp]

Read this article in Fast Company:

They Write the Right Stuff

There have been 17 bugs total in the last 11 OS revisions of the Shuttle code, approximately 420,000 lines delivered each time.

Good luck.

[BMIComp]

While installing the software, and monitors, and throughout all the comotion, let's just hope we DON'T USE THE METRIC SYSTEM!!!

Re:Good luck.

[VP]

I would say, let's hope they only use the metric system...

Re:Good luck.

[Microlith]

No. Let's make sure we don't use standard AMERICAN measurements. If we do everything in metric at all points in the line, you won't have that problem arise.

Re:Good luck.

[Benley]

Most definitely. This is something that has mystefied me for some time now regarding the failed Mars lander: Why in the HELL would they do anything at all using English measurements? Isn't this something you learn in high school chemistry? If it's science related, USE METRIC. That's all there is to it.

Re:Good luck.

[Detritus]

Doing something new in metric units is easy. Switching from English/Imperial to metric is a bitch when you have invested huge amounts of money and training in the old units.

Spacecraft navigation is the descendant of aircraft navigation which descended from the navigation of wooden ships. That is why they still use knots, feet and nautical miles.

I've wondered how we could switch to metric units for the operation and navigation of aircraft without killing thousands of people in the process. Everyone is used to "500 knots at 35,000 feet", and the air traffic control system is built around those units. How do we seamlessly change that to metric units? Plus the pilots have the old units deeply embedded in their brains. They know that the stall speed of their plane is 100 knots, the fuel consumption of the engine is 10 gallons/hour and many other important facts in the old units.

Operating Systems in Space!

[Eil]

I work on military aircraft avionics, which are (theoretically speaking) not really a lot different than space navigation systems. Right now most of our aircraft are still using 60's and 70's technology in the avionics systems.

Anyway, in a system with a glass cockpit, they will usually have a separate computer for every main function (navigation, guidance, heading, etc), and each computer will run on its own custom hardware. Software usually comes from dozens of banks of ROM chips. Although, if this system is still being designed from scratch, or was recently, then I don't see why they wouldn't use some sort of small RAID arrangement. If it even runs an OS (at least, how *we* define OS), chances are it will be very low level, and custom-coded by either NASA or a high-profile aviation company like Lockheed. Remember, custom (and very expensive) hardwear.

If they *were* to run a PC-type OS in this glass cockpit, I forsee them choosing either MS-DOS, (hey, it's been proven stable) or some Unix variant or clone known to be very stable (BSD?).

I'm almost certain they aren't going with Linux because don't you think they would have announced it by now? I mean, Open Source == Publicity these days.

And to you guys worring about Wince... 1) NASA is not really that stupid and I doubt it could handle shuttle avionics anyway 2) There are always two or three backup systems for every major system. :P

NOTE: This is all pure speculation which therefore means that it will probably be moderated down as flamebait. :P

Star trek

[ForceOfWill]

The flat panels kinda remind me of star trek >=TNG type panels... now all they need are touchscreens and a star trek theme, and they could change the name from Atlantis to Enterprise. No warp drive though... gotta wait till 2060s for Zephram Cochran (sp?) (OK, I've been watching first contact too much).

Re:Star trek

[Accipiter]

they could change the name from Atlantis to Enterprise.

Why would NASA want a shuttle named 'Enterprise' when they already *have* one?

NASA's first Shuttle was the Enterprise (OV-101). It was an experimental orbiter, and was used in various atmospheric flight tests in the 1970's. Unfortunately, it was retired before it ever flew in space but it did provide valuable information during it's lifetime. (The first shuttle that made it into space was Columbia, in 1981. Enterprise last flew on October 26, 1977.)

You can find a really nice picture of the Enterprise here.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:Star trek

[Eil]

And as a side note, the space shuttle you refer to was actually named after its fictional Star Trek namesake, ye olde NCC-1701. I saw a picture of it once with the Star Trek cast standing in the foreground at some type of chrisening ceremony.

Slightly out of date info

[luge]

This page has all kinds of crazy info on the original stuff that the Shuttle ran on. It gives a good idea of what it takes to run a shuttle- something like 6 processing units, each with about 400 KB of memory. Lots of stuff in there- details on the custom OS and language which they use, and on the extreme levels of redundancy (software written in two separate locations, 4 copies running in parallel, and an emergency landing program constantly loaded on a separate processor just in case.) Cool stuff...
~luge

Well...

[EvlPenguin]

Those screens looked pretty blue to me... which means it must be windows pulling another one of it's wonderfull faults. Seriously though my bet would be on a unix derivitive (bsd, linux, etc). NASA knows what its doing (well, not really but lets just say they do for the sake of argument) so the chances of using anything M$ is nill.

But then again, I also think the space program hasn't acomplished anything big enough to justify the billions spent on it. And why does everyone assume that all of us hackers/nerds are into sci-fi (or anything to do with space for that matter)? Ugh.

Always a Good thing?

[Soldier(R)]

Isn't there some benefit to having analogue instruments?

Given radiation and other space born anomolies, don't these upgrades create another occasion for something to go wrong?

If I recall correctly (IIRC), nearly half episodes on Star Trek: The Next Generation were based on problems that could have been avoided with analogue equipment. So there.


Soldier(R)

Re:Always a Good thing?

[SEWilco]

No, analog instruments fail also. This AOPA.Org article mentions about 40 aircraft accidents involving vacuum pump problems, causing problems for instruments.

Portrait of the '96 shuttle programming team

[bckspc]

This article "They Write the Right Stuff" appeared in the December 1996 issue of Fast Company. It paints an interesting picture of the requirements and culture of NASA's on-board shuttle programming team (circa 1996.)

The article's main trope pits the discipline and insanely controlled, methodical management of the team and its product against the stereotype of the undisciplined, unruly geeks pounding mountain dews and hammering out bug-riddled code at all hours.

It's still worth a look, though.

If its not broken dont fix(break) it

[_Gnubie_]

Sure the tech is old but its been proven to work lots of times. Every new system has bugs that gets past the fault simulators.

The last thing NASA needs right now is another goof-up. The money involved in deploying systems like this plus the training for the crew must have hurt on their shrinking budget.

What OS?

[darkbabbit]

I don't work on the shuttle, I work in the Avionic biz, which shares many similarities to the shuttle project.

The avionics biz is very conservative when it comes to items that relate to safety. The primary and secondary displays have to be so safe, bug free, and have such a small memory space that they don't use an operating system such as windows, *nix, or DOS. It is strictly bare metal programming. In the boxes that I work on, having 500k of ram to work with is a luxury item.

The graphics are usually handled by seperate chip with a dedicated graphics engine embedded into it. The main processor and graphics chip usually communicate via shared memory locations and the commands don't get any more complicated than "draw blue circle at location x,y with radius r" and many of the items come predrawn.

Re:What OS?

[aviator]

Aviation in general is a conservative business. If it works, and it's safe, there's no reason to change it. ILS hasn't really changed since it was first developed (mid 30's or so?) Aviation is almost never on the cutting edge. We're still clinging on to NDB's....

Re:What OS?

[superkorn]

As I understand it the only reason they still use ILS and not GPS is that the gov't messes up the GPS signal so it is not accurate enough. They are investigating ways to fix it up becuase GPS would be a lot safer and more accurate than ILS, at least in theory. But you are right that aviation is generally a conservative business, which is as it should be. If I get on a plane to go somewhere I want it to work. I don't want to be put in the role of test pilot for some new, unproven technology someone thought had a high "gee-whiz" factor...

Re:What OS?

[Spruitje]

As I understand it the only reason they still use ILS and not GPS is that the gov't messes up the GPS signal so it is not accurate enough.

That's why they use DGPS here in Europe.
DGPS is GPS with a shortwave receiver.
There are some shortwave transmitters in Europe which send a correction signal for GPS.
The result is, that DGPS has the same precision as military GPS..
The Swiss use DGPS on one of their airports.

Re:What OS?

[Detritus]

There is also a concern about detecting the failure or loss of GPS during a landing approach. You don't want your GPS receiver to be telling you that everything is wonderful, as your aircraft flies into the ground.

Re:What OS?

[aviator]

They are working on a GPS precision approach, it's in a few big airports for testing, I don't know if they plan to replace ILS with it or not. From what I've read/been taught they use differential GPS in a way, it has a ground station on or near the field to have a fixed point in the geometry to correct for the vertical inaccuracy and SA effect in GPS. The fact that the DoD can turn off GPS any time they wish is one aspect being debated, the rest of the world wants us to open up GPS completely.

Shuttle GPC Operating Systems

[Detritus]

The GPCs (General Purpose Computer) in the Shuttle use two software packages. Four of the computers run PASS (Primary Avionic Software System), which was originally written by the IBM Federal Systems Division. The fifth computer runs BFS (Backup Flight System), which was originally written by North American-Rockwell. The "operating system" is unique to the Shuttle, it isn't a port of a commercial product. PASS is the primary system, BFS is there as a backup in case of a common mode software failure during ascent or entry. The Shuttle is a fly-by-wire spacecraft. All of the control surfaces, and many other critical functions, are controlled by the computers. Without an operational computer, you crash and burn. Shuttle software is written in a language called HAL/S (High-Order Aerospace Language Shuttle), which was developed by Intermetrics. The Shuttle's operating system is a hard real-time operating system based on cyclic scheduling. A task is guaranteed to get N cycles of CPU time every X milliseconds. The tasks are managed by three executives, the HFE (High Frequency Executive), MFE (Medium Frequency Executive) and LFE (Low Frequency Executive). A task that issues commands to control surfaces is going to run at a high frequency. A task that checks tire pressure (really!) can run at a low frequency.

Re:Shuttle GPC Operating Systems

[Detritus]

and you know this how? Any references?

I spent years writing telemetry processor software for NASA ground stations, including software to support the Shuttle. You have to have a basic knowledge of Shuttle computer systems to understand how the telemetry is structured.

Re:Shuttle GPC Operating Systems

[asparagirl]

Shuttle software is written in a language called HAL/S...

HAL?! A system with an acronym like HAL is running the space shuttles? Oh, you have got to be kidding me...

[droning monotone voice:] "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do..."

- Asapargirl, rather disturbed

Computers

[BMIComp]

This page has links to many of the systems, most of which are computer controlled, aboard the aircraft.

Old news

[Hard_Code]

I believe I heard/read/saw this long ago (don't know why the story would just come out now). Why would they need an operating system though? To play quake during the journey or something?

Quake? What are you thinking?

[Shadox Tsurien]

C'mon, this is space. They'll be playing Descent.

the weight -- and more links/pics

[turg]

This CNN story is more informative and has better pictures.

The part I found amazing was that, in this conversion, the shuttle cockpit lost 25 pounds of weight. Now, CRT's aren't the lightest thing in the world, so those old dials and guages must have been pretty heavy

======
Webmasters: get a Free Palm Pilot for referring 25 signups (Web-based games).

========

Re:the weight -- and more links/pics

[HeghmoH]

The CNN article you linked to says, in the second paragraph, that they are replacing CRTs with flat-panel displays.

Re:IIS/ISS

[waddgodd]

Hidden back doors on Space Stations could ruin your whole day :)

OSS + SPACE?

[roman_mir]

Do you think it would be possible for open source code to be implemented in this way: or are these software writing processes already used in OSS? Somehow I doublt that GNU/Linux community could be utilized for such serious work.
Go ahead, prove me wrong...

Re:OSS + SPACE?

[roman_mir]

This is the type of programming I am talking about
Do you believe it would be possible to have an open source software project that could be successfully and without any problems or risks utilized for a space station?

Re:OSS + SPACE?

[Captn Pepe]

I don't see why these processes couldn't be implemented in OSS work. They already are, in part. The "many eyes" principle ensures rigourous code checking.

The reason open software still tends to be buggy (at least compared to the space shuttle software) is partially the lack of a coherent plan for the software before writing begins. Most OSS projects start life as a small chunk of sloppy code that is interesting enough to attract the attention of other developers. Consider what would happen if, instead, a project began life as a high-level spec, and the specs were filled out through an open-source process before coding began. This could produce very sophisticated code quite quickly. It requires pretty good organization, though.

Interestingly, most large OSS projects use CVS repositories and bug-tracking software, which fill the role of the code and error databases mentioned in the article. So it would seem that the only thing standing between OSS and this kind of sophistication is the need for a coherent and detailed design for the software before coding starts.

That said, I doubt that this process would ever generate anything much more creative than a hardware driver. The Shuttle Group programmers themselves admit that the all-important process stifles creativity. If you think about it, considering the level of specification they've been given, their end-product is really little more than a device driver for the entire space shuttle. You would be hard-pressed to write something requiring real innovation this way. If you tried, you'd probably find that you spend the same amount of effort making the spec book for the software, which would end up with subtle bugs in the spec due to the evolutionary nature of the project, which would then get translated directly into software bugs in the code. Oh well...

Re:OSS + SPACE?

[mOdQuArK!]

Perhaps if you had a detailed enough simulation of the software's working environment (with the caveat that you REALLY have to trust your simulator...), then you could have hundreds (or thousands) of people trying to write code, and then the simulation tries to break everything.

You could have a dedicated bunch of people who deliberately try and break any proposed system (including setting up hardware glitches, like cosmic rays or something).

Over time, the software would probably evolve into something quite robust.

The Mars lander was fine.

[www.sorehands.com]

There was no problem with the mars lander. It was the /. black UFO. Didn't you know, the comspiracy about the /. compound on %^%%^$$#@ connection terminated.

MS Shuttle

[Morbid Curiosity]

NASA Shuttle Avionics System

One of your applications has violated system integrity.
Please shut down all systems and restart Shuttle.

[OK][Help]

(Original message source: Shoei, RoI, 1994)

Use DOS.

[www.sorehands.com]

That's DOS, not DoS.

DOS is stable, and well known. You design these displays with either IR touch or resistive touch.

The reason for IR or resistive is it can handle gloved hands and the calibration is not effected by temperature or vibartions as much as accoustic or capacitance.

The reason for DOS, is it may have bugs, but everyone knows the bugs and all the tools for it is well developed and stable.

Using touch screens allow you to reduce the area needed for controls.

not a huge suprise

[jetpack]

This isn't exactly a huge suprise to me. I had a TA in university that had previously worked on the shuttle code, and showed us the design documents and the coding procedures for some of the shuttle control code. The attention to detail was almost unreal. Even the requirements doc was triple-intense, not to mention the coding procedures themselves. The shuttle folks are coding-for-keeps, and well they should; peoples lives are *directly* on the line.

Too bad the industry-at-large refuses to be as thorough as NASA.

Re:not a huge suprise

[unitron]

What if they branched out and picked up some bucks on the side creating and selling bug-free software? How cool would it be to run NASA-WARE ?

Re:not a huge suprise

[Troed]

Too bad the industry-at-large refuses to be as thorough as NASA.

But we're striving to be - more and more companies are reaching CMM levels 2 and 3, and when those companies reach 4 and 5 we're getting closer and closer to the code quality you see in critical software like the when running NASA's missions.

I'm personally not in favour of CMM levels >3 for normal software developing companies, but at least I have the CMM education to back that up ;)

Oh, and yes. I'm working for a company developing an operating system used by lots of people - we _do_ take bugs seriously!

Re:not a huge suprise

[jetpack]

I'm glad to hear that ... our company has quite high standards too, but that is really only because they are smart enough to employ exceptionally good developers and testers. The process itself sucks rock, but we do ok because of the folks involved in the process. I'm a developer for these guys (turn on your javascript :P) who do you work for?

Re:not a huge suprise

[Troed]

Symbian

(On the Quartz DFRD - the version of Epoc that will replace your Palm or WindowsCE device in the future ;)

Re:not a huge suprise

[Black Parrot]

> I'm working for a company developing an operating system used by lots of people - we _do_ take bugs seriously!

Micorsoft?

--
"Damn! And just when Piranha was starting to turn the tide of negative PR!"

Re:not a huge suprise

[SEWilco]

Well, if you can find where NASA's COSMIC library went then you can run it...

Re:not a huge suprise

[unitron]

Well, that's about where Microsoft prices will be soon, but you'll need much more expensive hardware to get it to work at all.

Re:not a huge suprise

[jetpack]

Looks interesting (altho I'm still doubtful about jamming PDA's and cellphones together), but I'm a Candian working in Houston, Texas, and all your developement positions seem to be in London. Probably not an easy option for a job change ;)

Common sense time.

[CausticPuppy]

Something, just SOMETHING tells me that no publicly-available OS is going to be used for an extremely specialized, critical application such as the space shuttle. Do you have ANY idea how complex the systems on that thing are? I sure as hell don't, but I remember reading somewhere that they are very, very complex. Very.
Nothing short of a custum, proprietary OS is going to run all that equipment. Proprietary, embedded, real-time OS. AtlantOS or something, or maybe DOScovery.
Gee, if they WERE using Linux, they'd have to release their code modifications, for the rest of us to install on our space shuttles.
Keep in mind that the new control systems have probably been in design for at least 5 years. What I'm getting at is that they're not going to design a bunch of custom hardware, then apply the latest kernel patch from kernel.org and then launch it. The OS was likely designed the same time as the hardware (only FOR that hardware, strangely enough) and probably has been rigorously tested and debugged for several years without any major changes. Just guessing, but it sounds similar to logic.

Re:Common sense time.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I can't speak for the primary system computers, the embedded are probably running vxworks, by Wind Rivers. Although they may not be fancy, its the embedded systems that control everything from the positioning thrusters to the oxygen regeneration systems to the space toilet. Theres really no reason for a super secret os, vxworks is time proven as an embedded real time os. In general, NASA and its subcontractors use old, time proven technology. In the aerospace industry, you are generally given a job, and a deadline. You don't have time to try and invent a whole bunch of new wheels, you look at the ones you have available and use those. The result is new applications that do amazing things using antiquated parts.

Re:Common sense time.

[Ravagin]

Makes sense to me.

Re:Common sense time.

[mOdQuArK!]

Good lord, if things are THAT complex they're DEFINITELY not going to want to write everything from scratch on their own! Do you have any idea how many bugs they'd have to work out on their own - bugs that have ALREADY been worked out for large & complicated systems which are put under severe stress every day.

More than likely, they picked something which was as simple in construction as possible, but still can get the job done, and then had their own people crawl over the architecture & source code with a fine-tooth comb. You'd better believe that they're not going to blindly trust a software company just because they SAY their code is mission-critical ready - they're going to want to look at the source code themselves.

Re:Common sense time.

[CausticPuppy]

Yes, it would take a group of rocket scientists to design an OS from scratch for the space shuttle.

(....pondering the previous statement)

Whatever they use, it's surely been in testing for years. I'm sure that the "booster O-ring bug" taught a hard lesson on cutting corners.

Linux is great, but it can't do everything. I still have to wipe my own ass.

It's all about $

[Camel Pilot]

If the industry-at-large was this anal s/w would cost 10 to 100 times. Notice in the article there was no mention on $ / LOC.

Re:It's all about $

[jetpack]

If it were that simple, I'd agree. However, software maintainance costs a significant amount of cash. The only real advantage, as far as I can tell, in being lax with requirements/design/coding is being first to market. Unfortunately you wind up paying for it in maintenance and bug fixes later. If you got it right the first time, you might be a bit behind the competitors, but you'd look good in the eyes of perspective clients because your software didnt suck. And you wouldnt have to pay your coders to fix things. You could pay them to add interesting and useful features.

So, yes, in the end, it's all about cash. I'm just convinced that in the general case cash is being spent improperly.

Re:It's all about $

[Zurk]

the problem is that SEI level 5 is completely nuts - the only use for software like that is in critical systems like the shuttle. an acceptable level of failure (e.g. the linux kernel or BSD kernels etc) are fine without going overboard. the shuttle group costs $35 million *every year*...thats more than most companies will *earn* in a year.

Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience

[Detritus]

This is an interesting book on the history of computers in space, it is available on the web here. It has a chapter on the Shuttle's computer systems.

Also see CACM Volume 27, Issue 9 (September 1984) for an interesting article on Shuttle software.

Houston, we got a problem

[ContinuousPark]

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but it's pretty similar. It's from Wired News; they were watching NTV too and listened to this conversation where one of the astronauts had a problem with, guess what?, Microsoft Outlook. =) and called Houston for help. I suppose it was running on one of the Thinkpads that they now carry with them on the shuttle.

Re:Houston, we got a problem

[waldoj]

You know, that is the story that I was thinking of, but it's clearly describing another incident. I'd recalled that, hazily, as being about the same episode that I'd witnessed.

Well, chalk me up as a nut. :)

-Waldo

darpa?

[craw]

I believe that DARPA has in the past funded research into high-tech display screens. While it is nice that the space shuttle is upgrading their displays, it also note-worthy to consider what may implemented in the future. One such technology is head-mounted displays (HMD).

News for Nerds, right? So if like high-tech, go check out what DARPA is currently funding. Remember, high risk, but the potential for high paybacks. For HMD resolutions check out this project.

Hmmm, just had an interesting thought. DARPA played a major role in the development of the internet. DARPA obviously also funds other seriously high-tech projects. Why isn't there more DARPA stories posted here? Perhaps it is time to change to the more politically correct name, ARPA? Note to some ppl, DARPA and ARPA are the same, only the name has been changed to appease the political gods of funding.

Side note, I don't know why the DARPA web site wants to give me cookies some of the time.

I'd rather not have glass...

[DeepDarkSky]

glass CRTs just seems a little too vulnerable to failures to me. I mean, for god's sake, it's glass! We are talking about space vehicles which may be subject to several G's of acceleration. Granted, that may not cause any problems, but if one of the CRT cracks or breaks, it will be useless. In many ways, I think that analog gauges would be more reliable. You certainly should not put several gauges together such that there's a vulnerable single point of failure. I suppose they could make it with something like bullet proof or shatter resistant glass (I hope) to remedy this proble.

Then there's the electrical system that's needed to drive such as system. What if the electrical system for the gauges were to lose power? No gauges? There should at least be backup analog gauges for some vital system gauges.

What they should also try to develop that would be better than CRTs though not as good as analogs would be some kind of flexible durable flat panel display. Something like the surface of those plastic mouse pads. You could bend it, press on it, and it would not cause significant damage. Even better still, make it so that the display is not a general purpose display, but pre-configured display that changes depending on electrical current/voltage like the analog gauges. But it would have advantage over the analog gauges because it would not have any moving parts. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, imagine those Duracell battery testers used as gauges. I mean, wouldn't that fairly resistant to all kinds of adverse conditions and abuse? And if you make them like "skins" that you could just snap in place, then you could easily carry redundant gauges because they would be very light!

Come on, they could do better than that! Or am I just completely wrong on this?!

Re:I'd rather not have glass...

[drudd]

First off, I'm about as far from being an expert in such matters as you can get.

It occurs to me that CRT's would be far BETTER for high stress environments, simply due to the removal of moving parts.

Doug

Re:I'd rather not have glass...

[RussGarrett]

All commercial aricraft which have glass cockpits have to have seperate backup gauges for altitude, speed, etc...

Re:I'd rather not have glass...

[Gompers]

Glass cockpits are common, if not exclusively used in today's high performance fighter aircraft. These aircraft are capable of sustaining more than their pilots can handle as far as G forces, and often will go from +8 or 9 to -2 or 3 in a matter of seconds. I think glass has proven it's self.

Also, most analog guages (with a few exceptions) rely on electricty as well (for gyros and such), so if you lost electricity, you're still in pretty dire straits.

This being said, almost every glass cockpit I've ever seen has a backup set of small analog guages just in case!

Re:I'd rather not have glass...

[mcdu]

Actually many of the new flight computers today cause more stress on pilots because they aren't completely familiar with the functions. In fact one study recently suggested that 50%+ of all pilots could not understand the changes in flight modes and what caused them.

However, the new glass displays do offer a great deal more information which does make it somewhat easier to use. The downfall is that the transition back to the analog gauges is not to easy.

Having said all of this, the new cockpit designs (Shuttle included)are pretty helpful. The interfaces are becoming better and the flying more automated (which can be better or worse depending on your perspective). All aircraft must have backup analog gauges (look at any of the Airbus cockpits) as the loss of an electrical bus can cause the glass gauges to fail (as seen the the SwissAir flight over Nova Soctia).

What will be really interesting is the next generation aircraft and how their cockpits work. In fact, the new Airbus (A3xx) is supposed to have all of their flight instruments connected via an Ethernet interface. There is even a movement on to make the aircraft a node on the network via newer ACARS systems (think about the possibilities of pinging the plane).

Re:I'd rather not have glass...

[otis wildflower]

In fact, the new Airbus (A3xx) is supposed to have all of their flight instruments connected via an Ethernet interface.

I'd hate to see what happens when all those controls attempt to operate simultaneously.. Gives 'packet collision' a new image, eh? (and judging how cheap some of these airlines get you KNOW like Tower Air is gonna go for the daisy-chained Linksys hubs...)

(Token Ring and FDDI are far more suitable for realtime communications than CSMA/CD systems, particularly the interference-resistance of optical connections from FDDI... And hell, the French love AIX/IBM...)

Your Working Boy,

Re:I'd rather not have glass...

[Porag_Spliffing]

From what I read on the CNN site they are replacing CRTs which they had as well as normal analogue gauges with 'flat pannels' to quote:

The new cockpit replaces dozens of conventional gauges and cathode-ray tube displays with 11 flat-panel color screens that provide easier pilot recognition of key functions, NASA said.

I guess 'flat pannels' are TFT type diplays or similar.

The shuttle can't land by itself

[Anonymous Coward]

The landing gear can't be deployed except by a human pilot flipping the right switch. There must be a live pilot on board for else it would make a big hole in the runway.

Re:The shuttle can't land by itself

[CharBoy]

This is actually true, the Shuttle cannot deploy its landing gear in the computer. The previous users post shouldn't have been moderated down, he's absolutely correct and it is on-topic.

The astronauts objected to the computer being able to deploy the gear automatically, and this was given to them by the software people as a meaningless victory in their fight against the full automation of the shuttle.

The concern the astronauts claimed was that if a computer glitch caused the gear to deploy while in orbit, the result would be a loss-of-vehicle scenario.

The software is capable of handling every aspect of a shuttle landing except for the landing gear itself.

An interesting side note, if the gear aren't deploying within a half a second or so of the deploy switch being pressed, there are pyrotechnic charges that deploy the gear by force. As far as I know, they haven't been needed yet, but I imagine it'd be quite a sensation...

Re:The shuttle can't land by itself

[Grant Elliott]

The astronauts said the same thing about computer controled braking (during landing). The programmers asked them to give it a shot, and the astronauts loved it. The programmers did an excellent job. I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain the landing gear was put under computer control at the same time.

Mission control at Houston

[XNormal]

Don't know about the shuttle, but the glass mission control center in Houston uses Alphas running Digital Unix. The old dial-and-gauge mission control center used during the Apollo missions is now preserved as a histroical monument.

----

Hacking ISS

[Biggy]

I guess in a few weeks all of us will be able to run our own experiments on the ISS. "if you know what i mean of course"

insert "buhaha...buhahah"

B

The PDP-11, of course

[maynard]

How many other computer systems can you think of that have been running for the last twenty years? How many other systems have had the tens of thousands of hours of testing and, even more importantly, have worked flawlessly every time?

Believe it or not, but the PDP/LSI-11 series of computer is still in use in sheet metal and other factory floors even today. The damn thing is a workhorse which lives in production even after the death of Digital -- long after DEC stopped supporting the hardware.

Not that this diminishes the value of your point. :-)

Karma Whorin'

[mholve]

This sounds suspiciously like the post I wrote in a story earlier on - a full 7+ hours earlier!

Cutting edge?

[oobfrist]

Aerospace electronics are well behind what you or I would consider cutting edge.
There are still plenty of vacuum tubes flying the friendly skies.
While this is certainly an improvement for the shuttle it is just an adaptation of technology currently used in airliners such as the 777.
See the Honeywell pr at: http://aerospace.alliedsignal.com/aerospace/media_ center/current_press_releases/releases/p r032700.html

OS? Reliability and more...

[Anonymous Freak]

Well, I've seen a few 'comical' posts about this story, so I just have to weigh in. I'm an Aerospace Engineer, and I have friends who are 'Aviation Computer Scientists'. That means that they program the computers that run airplanes.

Observation 1. The 'glass cockpit' displays in airplanes (and, presumably the Space Shuttle) do not run off the shelf operating systems. They are custom, proprietary operating systems written specifically for what they do. They have no need to use a general purpose OS, when what they need above all else is rock solid stability for just a few functions. One of my old college buddies is even working on the code for the 'operating system' of the new space station.

Myth: Glass displays are fragile. This is simply not true. The space shuttle has had glass displays since the first one, but there just weren't as many, and as prevalent as they are after this refurbishing. Glass displays can handle the 4 G's experienced by the shuttle just fine, as well as the vibration. For one, jet fighters have glass displays in them, and regularly handle worse G forces than the shuttle ever does.

Hopefully this clears it up a little more. Any questions, just post.

Re:OS? Reliability and more...

[otis wildflower]

Glass displays can handle the 4 G's experienced by the shuttle just fine, as well as the vibration.

Yes, but they're bulky, heavy, use lots of power and generate lots of heat. Basically the worst possible thing to use on a spacecraft besides uninsulated O-rings... Why didn't they go with flat-panel (plasma or LCD) displays?

Your Working Boy,

Re:OS? Reliability and more...

[Anonymous Freak]

Yes, but they're bulky, heavy, use lots of power and generate lots of heat. Basically the worst possible thing to use on a spacecraft besides uninsulated O-rings... Why didn't they go with flat-panel (plasma or LCD) displays?

Simple: reliability. Remember, NASA is a government agency. They want something that is completely, totally proven reliable. CRTs are just that. Yes, they're heavier and draw more power than LCD; but they're MUCH better than the scores of dials and gagues that were there before. And, they're more sturdy. A glass display is much more flightworthy than LCD.

And, even the many CRTs that are in the new cockpit weigh less than the old gagues. And for all of you wondering what happens when the displays go out? Not only would they have backup systems (at least 3,) but all aircraft with glass cockpits are required to have manual gague backups of the most important six instruments. I would assume that this is true for the shuttle as well, although I haven't seen high enough quality pictures of the new cockpit to be certain.

Replaced in 'a few years'?

[Anonymous Freak]

The VentureStar (the scheduled replacement for the Shuttle) is at least a decade away. The X-33 is just the small-scale prototype of it. The X-33 will undergo at least 3 years of testing before work even starts on the VentureStar. I honestly believe that a private company will end up making a replacement before NASA gets around to it. One to look into is Rotary Rockets. They are scheduled to make their first orbital flight later this year or early next year. (This would be the first time that a private venture, as opposed to a government, has sent a human in space.)

Never touch a running system!!

[Criwi]

Why replace something that works? Because it looks more modern? I guess replacing the shuttle cockpit is very carefully planned thing and they updated it because after decades they had enough knowlegdle about what information a shuttle pilot needs and what not.

And the NASA Computers: Recently they have replaced the Computer onboard teh HST with an 386 and a solid-state disk to replace the tape-drives.
If you want exiting Space adventures, look for a Cold War...

Shuttle "Human Interface" at CHI 88

[NickAubrey]

The year that SIGCHI was held in Austin (88? 89?) one of the keynote speakers was a shuttle astronaut. He said that since three systems in the cockpit had been desinged by three different companies with no overall design spec, the shuttle "programmers" had to learn three different obscure languages simly to "fly the bird:" a rudimentary BASIC-like command language, octal, and hex! One of the earliest missions nearly landed in the ocean because of a hex-octal mistake. It was this guy's opinion that the shuttle was as much an ergonomic lab as a zero=gravity, low=space lab. Also, the designers had bolted shut one of the access panels because they were sure nobody would ever need to get into it. One mission was saved only because one of the astronauts had smuggled up a Vise-grip, which was verboten.

OS might be solaris

[hepatitis_bee]

I got a chance to look at one of the robotic interfaces that is either going in the shuttle or ISS, and they said they will be moving to more off the shelf products to save money, the laptop I saw looked like it was running a version of solaris, but then again, that could be for prototyping purposes.

Other questions of reliability in space

[wackypak]

I've heard that the Shuttle's laptops are not more powerful than early Pentiums or 486's because of cosmic radiation which can damage high density computer equipment or cause them to malfunction. (like more modern PII/PIII/Alpha/etc.)

What I want to know is, how did they manage to reliably shield all the computer equipment from cosmic radiation? One must remember that all that computer equipment must be about the same weight as what the analog based stuff was... I can't imagine huge blocks of lead with computers sealed inside being carted up into space.

The average Joe likes his DirectTV.

[Claudius]

But then again, I also think the space program hasn't acomplished anything big enough to justify the billions spent on it.

While the average Joe may not give a whit about ephemeral scientific discoveries, he does like his DirectTV.

Permit me, if you will, to disagree with your statement. A healthy space program provides a great number of benefits to society: GPS, weather satellites, communication satellites, and yes, digital TV. These are so integral a part of our lives that we no longer even think of where they came from, yet they follow immediately from the technologies developed in the space program. NASA's Mission to Planet Earth was highly illuminating from an environmental perspective, and it led to great deal of insight into how man affects the global climate. (Too bad their findings were so unpopular with certain powerful lobbying groups in Washington, else their funding probably wouldn't have been axed so earnestly). With solar maximum arriving, an emphasis has been made in understanding the Sun-Earth connection better in order to predict geomagnetic storms reliably. Consider the billions of lost revenue when a single massive blackout occurs or when a handful of expensive spacecraft are incapacitated, and the potential payoffs from this research become apparent. Furthermore, "spinoff" technologies from the space program are commonplace: new materials, advances in computing and computational physics techniques, and advances in manufacturing techniques all have resulted from a space-program impetus.

Another benefit of a healthy space program is how our remote monitoring capabilities allow us to make public policy more effectively. For example, with a combination of satellite observations and ground-based seismic observations, we were able to detect nuclear weapons tests in India and Pakistan recently. Nuclear war is bad for business, and the space program has helped give us the tools to make informed policy decisions related to nuclear weapons.

Many highly successful "pure" scientific missions have been launched by NASA and other space programs: Orbiting and imaging of near-earth asteroids, Jupiter and its moons, Mars, and (in a few years) Saturn. The Voyager mission, the "Energizer Bunny" of spacecraft, still sends back useful data about the outer regions of the heliosphere and heliopause. The Space Telescope has led to an enormous number of discoveries that would be extremely difficult or impossible to have achieved without such a device. The solar wind and heliosphere are becoming much better understood with in situ observations being made by spacecraft such as Ulysses, SOHO, and ACE. The list goes on and on. I've only provided a small sample here.

While we may quibble about the merits of certain programs (the ISS comes to mind), the space program as a whole has, in my mind, performed admirably with the resources we have given them. (Now if you wish to argue about programs that do not justify their cost, Social Security comes to mind...).

Addendum: Hardware.

[Anonymous Freak]

I've also seen some posts about how old the hardware in the space shuttle is. Two things about that:

1. The shuttle was designed in the early '70s. That means the equipment had to have been proven equipment at the time.
2. The same is true now. The equipment being used in the upgrade has to be proven hardware. That means that the new hardware is probably at least 10 years old.
3. To run the cockpit systems doesn't take much power. A system equivalent to a 286, with 500k of memory, is more than enough to run a glass cockpit.

For glass cockpit displays, the only part that really takes any power is the actual display, and that is usually taken care of with dedicated hardware.

Re:Where are pictures?

[rhaig]

Here is the STS-101 Photo Archive

Included are some photos of the new cockpit.

OS Used onboard Space Suttle

[brainchild2b]

I know for a fact, that when first started they used a modified basic interpreter with 286s. As of now they are using a variant of NeXt based on IBM PowerPC Processors. The NeXt operation system allowed Nasa to quickly and effeciently develop object oriented code and applets for the gages and such. Not to meantion they can easily reconfigure them. I know several of the onboard consoles actually have StrongARM processors running behind them. One of the engineers who works as NASA commented that the StrongARM is the exact same one used in the Newton 2000 from Apple Computer. I know at one time NASA was considering using OS Warp but they didn't want something that was hard to support. Also several of the console systems are rumored to have a g3 or two running inside there... Everything i have just told i got straight from the NASA engineers. Three of my life time drinking buddys :-) I would apreciated, NOT having my host exposed. Thank-you.

On Telnet Onboard

[brainchild2b]

one more thing, neither of my friends will (who work at NASA) will tell me anymore, because they are afraid of losing their jobs. But they both have in the past told me about an instance in the early 90's where a HAM DX operator actually used some sorta protocal (i know nothing about HAM radio) and telneted into the space shuttle. Apparently the telnet login was as a emergency command incase mission control need another access control point. Anyway the HAM operator called NASA on it right away... Hmm, not my first choice :-) Anyway it is somewhere in the 20GHz range this telnet and the shuttle communications.

Re: GPS for aviation

[Ledge Kindred]

If you have a military GPS receiver, you can decode the encrypted military GPS signals that are on a different frequency than the civilian signals which will allow you to find your GPS coordinates down to a few inches.

But there are a lot of other reasons why GPS isn't very good for aviation use:

GPS does not handle altitude very accurately.

GPS does not handle very high speeds all that well.

I imagine the GPS system would break down entirely when you reach a good percentage of the altitude of the GPS satellites themselves. Not so good for the shuttle. (Seeing as this is what the article is about...)

Here's a great URL for lots of info on how GPS works: http://www.trimble.com/gps/index.htm (It uses Shockwave, but you can still view it without.) Here's another with lots of information about GPS units: http://joe.mehaffey.com/

-=-=-=-=-

NASA's OS choices

[spoonboy42]

I've been to several NASA sites recently, and I can tell you that on the ground most of the machines are SGIs, presumably running IRIX.

As for the shuttle itself, the onboard computers are mostly 386s. If I remember correctly, ESR mentioned in one of his essays that NASA runs trimmed-down Linux on the integrated computers.

The computers that are used for scientific research are different for each mission. If you read Linux Journal, you're familiar with the Metro-X adds which boast that Metro-X X servers are used on the space shuttle. Therefore we can be reasonably sure that either Linux or *BSD runs on these computers at least part of the time.

Also, it should be noted that shuttle crew members are allowed to bring their own laptops onboard for personal use, presumably running whatever they please.

Is this such a hot idea?

[warrenwu]

I'm not totally convinced that this is a hot idea. Suppose somebody lit off a nuke, or an extreamly powerful solar flare went off? Either way, you're talking about the computers getting fried. In space, there is no room for error, even the smallest mistake can mean the loss of a mission. That's why we still use 486's on the space shuttle. They're one of the most easily hardened chips around. A higher processor would crumble in space within minutes. Solar/cosmic radiation can REALLY mess up anything electronic. Aside from that, we don't need a 266 for navigation. We got to the moon on slide rulers and a computer less powerful than my TI calculator.

Re: GPS for aviation

[tesserae]

Not quite right: the military does indeed use GPS for navigation. They use what's known as the Inertial Navigation System/Global Positioning System (for which I unfortunately have no link). But the same technology is used for actual flight control of at least one spacecraft.

The X-38 (NASA's technology demonstrator for the Crew Return Vehicle, AKA "Space Station Lifeboat") does indeed use INS/GPS for its primary navigation sytem. It also uses GPS for direct flight control under that huge (7500 square foot!) parafoil ("square parachute," to the skydivers in the audience). Part of the reason it can do this is that its airspeed is reasonably low under the parachute (on the order of 50 knots), and it uses a laser altimeter to determine its altitude as it closely approaches the ground.

Since the Shuttle operates under entirely different circumstances during its entire flight envelope, GPS isn't particularly workable for direct flight control -- as you noted.

---

Re:BSoD in Space (this one has a punchline!)

[Niko.]

Saw this a couple months ago. It gives some nice perspective on how guys who are presumably used to dealing with well-though-out UI feel about Microsoft's efforts.

lwn.net/980212/a/shuttle.html

Re: GPS for aviation

[lapdog]

> But there are a lot of other reasons why GPS isn't very good for aviation use:

> GPS does not handle altitude very accurately

> GPS does not handle high speeds all that well.

True, GPS does have some short comings. I don't know if you've ever flown a plane with GPS, but its a world of difference versus The Old Way. There are better instruments for reporting altitude and airspeed, GPS gives you a good groundspeed reading as well. But aboveall, the best thing about GPS is that you know where you are.

Most other pilots I've talked to prefer the combination of a GPS feeding a movingmap display. Neither instrument is approved for IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) so you're not supposed to just blindly trust it for your position, but if you're in an emergency situation and you need to find someplace to put the plane down, the GPS will tell you where the closest strip is that can handle your plane.

wannabe aviator.
--------

Re:EHW ME GOD THE MOUSE DIED 0000

[TinMan00]

I guess I forgot to leave a cookie
for the moderators when I cleaned my cache,
they cast out my previous post as a craven
coward.

In order to save mem-space [see I saved 3 bytes right there] I won't republish, only point

Its about time, they've been using
consolidated data systems for decades now.
Its time that the innovative branch of
the government took a stab at it.

I guess the astronauts can leave their
powerbooks home this trip.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^

One of the more remarkable aspects
of dental caries is that the
trauma to the cheek tissue is
signifigantly greater than
the turgor elaborated about the
damaged roots in many patients.
Sounds like radiation damage
caused by a MICROWAVE LASER.

Re: Common sense time

[CentrX]

NASA would only have to release their code modifications if they released binaries of the code.

Chris Hagar

error rate in Airbus fly-by-wire software

[mr_death]

I'm curious -- does anyone know the error rate for Airbus software?

Airbus has taken the position that the computer, rather than the pilots, can fly the airplane better. In fact, the pilots cannot override the computer.

As a pilot and software engineer, I find the Airbus philosophy fundamentally flawed. I can think of a few incidents on Boeing aircraft that would have turned into an "everyone dead" senario on a fly-by-wire Airbus (A320/330/340). You won't catch me dead flying on or acting as Pilot In Command of an aircraft exhibiting the Airbus philosophy.

OK, French Persons, flame away. :-)

new remarkable [vapour]gizmo: magnetic memory

[peter]

If that high data density magnetic-nano-core memory stuff (the subject of a recent /. story) makes it into production, it would probably be perfect. _No_ moving parts, fast enough to use as RAM, and, being magnetic, probably not nearly as succeptible to radiation errors as DRAM. (but the bits are stored on a pretty darn small amount of material, so there might be problems.)
#define X(x,y) x##y

skipping?

[peter]

Ya know, the CD might skip during firing of the engines... (and don't say to use anti-skip, because they might as well use just use RAM chips instead if they're going to have enough to hold all the data.)
#define X(x,y) x##y

Better picture

[dwdyer]

Cool picture can be found here .

I'm waiting for the desktop theme.

NASA-WARE

[peter]

Well, considering that Beowulf was developed at Nasa (albeit not by the shuttle group!), running NASA-WARE would be infinitely cool to many /.ers :)
#define X(x,y) x##y

Units

[peter]

IIRC, NASA uses metric exclusively. I think it was Lockheed that sent them instructions in English units, which NASA forgot to convert. NASA is doing the right thing by using metric, it's the contractors that are stuck in their backward ways.
#define X(x,y) x##y

moderation irony

[peter]

> NOTE: This is all pure speculation which therefore means that it will
> probably be moderated down as flamebait. :P

... and someone modded your post as Informative :) Maybe insightful, though. (The probably would use MSDOS, if anything, since DOS doesn't actually do anything, so the program they wrote could take care of everything itself.)
#define X(x,y) x##y

No discussion of shuttle computers is complete...

[The Breeze]

without reading the appendix that Richard Feynman wrote to the report of the 1986 Challenger explosion.
Feynman goes into some detail about the guidelines of testing & debugging that the programmers have to follow, and his reasoning on why the computers (as of 1986) needed to be upgraded. He also talks about the manual landing button for the gear, etc.
It's interesting to read about how NASA management, before the Challenger disaster, was trying to get the programmers to do less testing because "it's too expensive and we never seem to have problems."
A far more detailed description of Feynman's investigation (along with the appendix itself) can be found in Feynman's book, "What do you care what Other People Think?", published shortly after his death.

Re:Rotary Rockets...

[Anonymous Freak]

Yeah, I applied to get an internship with Rotary when they first started up, but they weren't looking. I wish I could get a job with them now...

As to the "...orbit with 1/5 the kerosene a 747 uses?" Remember, it doesn't have the payload of a 747. It can only carry a few thousand pounds, not the hundred thousand or so a 747 can carry. I never really did understand their comparison to a 747. They should have compared it to an Atlas booster AND an airliner.

OS

[DiGiTaL_H]

if NASA decides to run windows, what happens when all the astronauts get addicted to solitaire???

On a side note

[Aasmunds]

Without an operational computer, you crash and burn.

If all systems were to fail simultaneously for some reason, and the shuttle reentered without any control whatsoever, it'd burn, of course, but would it manage to get all the way down and do the "crash" part?