Slashdot Mirror
2001: A Space Laptop
Phrogman writes: "SpaceRef has posted an exclusive and detailed article concerning NASA's use of laptops in space including information on the LAN configuration aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis (with full-color diagrams); lists of software run on the Shuttle laptop computers (with screenshots like this); laptop specs; descriptions of the LAN to be installed on the Space Station; and a lot of other related official NASA materials and links." It's a neat primer on Taking Your Computer to Space, too -- it addresses things like the available power sources, the need for velcro, and quirks of operating in zero G.
I wonder what sort of ping times you get from there...
"Dammit, I just got fragged by another Earth-bound runt again..."
I wonder if a Napster server in space could get sued?
I wonder if the hard drive would perform better in zero gravity.... stupid thought maybe...
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
Quoting from the article:
The PGSC, and everything else inside the Shuttle, needs to be able to be attached to a stable surface to keep it from floating away. Next to duct tape (also known as "gray tape" at NASA), one of the standard means of attaching one thing to another in space is the use of Velcro.
Heh. Duct tape and velcro are holding our space program together? Seems somehow appropriate. Maybe they can swing over to MIR and patch up some of THEIR problems. Apparently, those stupid russians have been using ordinary masking tape.
-The Reverend
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
The article does mention that they also use Linux and MacOS systems in space as well. Hopefully we will see a follow up article on the use of Linux as well.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Everyone brace yourselves for the standard barrage of really dorky BSOD-in-space jokes moderated up as funny.
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IBM ThinkPad series PGSCs are not the only laptops that have flown - or will fly in space. Computers using Mac OS and Linux have also flown as part of various payloads and are likely to continue to do so in the future. Meanwhile, the Russians will be using a Weiner Power laptop in their portion of the ISS. Other participating partners will likely bring their own laptops.
All I can envision is wrapping wire around your penis and sticking it in and out of a magnet.
... they run Windows 95...
Why dont they just do what most Top Secret military facilities do and have seperate "public" and "private" network terminals? No access to the public internet for mission critical systems, but have a few public terminals that can be used for communications both ways
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I've put a lot of thought into this. Please don't dismiss me right away.
e -hell-they-are-this-month. The company has literally gobs of liquid cash to burn. Thanks to the contributions of unpaid open source developers everywhere, expenses are low. Thanks to banner ad hits, hardware sales, and software distribution (or distrobution if you're a regular here), revenue is high.
/. logo on the vertical stabilizer. We could even paint "This spacecraft Copyright 1997-2000 OSDN" on the side. We could replace all the computers inside the Shuttle with overclocked VALinux boxes. We could supply the crews with /. coffee mugs and Penquin Mints. Missions could be completed in half the time!
We all recognize the phenomenal success of Slashdot/Andover/VALinux/OSDN/Plymouth/Whoever-th
I think the time has come for Slashdot to think big. I mean bigger than the Slashdot Cruiser. With that in mind, I would like to make a modest proposal:
Paint the Slashdot logo on the Space Shuttle
It could work: Thanks to 8 years of post-Cold War Democratic cutbacks, NASA is hard up for money. Heck, it's a wonder the Shuttle doesn't already look like something out of the NASCAR Winston Cup series.
Why not corporate sponsorship of the Space Shuttle? And who better to provide that sponsorship than the site bringing us "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters?"
Picture it: The Space Shuttle -- painted Slashdot-Green with the
We could even go a step further. We could the entire Shuttle fleet! Instead of "Enterprise", "Endeavor", "Columbia", we could have "CmdrTaco", "JonKatz", and "Hemos".
Imagine hearing a newscaster saying, "The Space Shuttle JonKatz lifted off this morning. It will remain in orbit for three weeks." Doesn't that make you feel a little funny inside?
Is the idea of an open-source space program just a dream? Won't you share the dream with me?
Got a full tank of hot grits and a penis bird in the glove box.
Y'all might be interested in the Fast Company article that's somewhat related, entitled "They Write the Right Stuff." I believe that there was mention of this on /. some months back. It's about the computers that actually control the shuttle and the process of writing that software. Pretty hard-core.
-Waldo
This is cool to see... I've often seen them using rather archane things, and now I really do know a little bit more of what seperates me from an astronaut.
Anyone think they could do better tho? heheh
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Well, like I said earlier, unless the heat sinks are properly configured, you could very easily burn out the processor by overcloaking it. Part of the problem with heat dissipation in space (and part of the problem with breathing...) is the lack of gravity. With no natural breeze, you get the same air trapped around the processor.
Now, yes, you can use fans to move air about. But how do the fans work in 0 G? (Well, microgravity, but pretty much the same thing...) I imagine that the fans have to be reconfigured as well.
I also imagine that the boards have to be reinforced to withstand the forces during takeoff, as well as the screen... the mouse is simple; use the same little pad you normally do with laptops.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
It'd sure be a bitch to use a mouse; gotta keep a grip on it at all times....
:D) might be a better solution for Zero G pointer manipulation. Anybody care to point out how wrong I am?
I'm not sure what, if anything, would forbid you from using a trackball, but it seems like a trackball (with a "velcro-modified" base
-The Reverend
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
Face it, when in variable G land (e.g. space), it's a really good idea to have too much velcro. And have suits with velcro-ended cables.
Plus, the lack of air motion is very critical - you want a laptop with good heat dissipation and good fans, plus you need to be sure the fan motors can take varying G forces. Overclocking is a big no-no. Extra RAM is highly recommended.
Then there's the CD. Remember, no gravity pulling down makes these very difficult to use. Best to have it in firmware or cartridge form. Spin effects can be very hard to clock right in low or zero-G, and it needs to survive the boost.
Now, when will we see a smart company like Transmeta donate some laptops with low power consumption to NASA, both to sell the chip and to make them hot geek items? Heck, I can see the ads now "As Used By NASA In Zero-G", "The Laptop That Went To Space".
What happens if you get the Blue Screen of Death - do you die?
Will in Seattle
Does NASA trust there computers with Windows?
They use Windows on the laptops they carry up with them. It's not like they'll be running anything mission critical on them. They probably just want to get in a few rounds of Diablo II in between spacewalks.
Does this
[...]you could very easily burn out the processor by overcloaking[...]
;)
Burn out? Naw, it'd just shimmer a bit and then disappear...
--K
(Sorry, had to.
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Got Rhinos?
One good thing comes of using windows... If their GPS box dies, they can replace it with a Word document with a tracking pixel.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Working in graphics I have endless problems with conversions of rotations between Euler angles and quaternions. It's funny to see that NASA must share these problems and actually have a stand alone tool to do the conversion. Can you imagine the situations where you actually have to type in those number by hand into a GIO like that!
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-- SIGFPE
- Only the laptops are running Windows. They're not trusting their flight-control systems to it.
- Would Linux be able better for what they need? They're not serving web-pages, or handling multiple users. They're not worried about the cost of the software. Windows is an acceptable solution in this case. The end-users were probably already familiar with it, which is always a benefit
...
So, honestly, does it really matter?I'm one of those sick people who actually watches NASA TV during shuttle missions. It's kind of a out of this world reality TV show. Anyway, the laptops onboard do lockup from time to time. They just reboot and try again. As was said earlier, nothing mission critical is run on them.
World Beach List, my latest project.
Imagine how good sysadmin on the Space Shuttle would look on your resume.
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
We all had a good laugh when the 16lb. beast became the first truly weightless laptop.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
... by the looks of those buttons.
Ew.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
How could they last without DOOM?
- - - - - - - -
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Sigh... Figures we'd get a reaction like that from the six-digit-account-number crowd. Slashdot isn't what it used to be.
I might expect such a comment from a five-digit-account-number poster like yourself. Slashdot isn't what it used to be. Far Side pics? On Slashdot? How frivolous! I remember back when the only acceptable allusions on Slashdot were to man pages, Linus quotes, and kernel source. What a soft lot we've become...
Besides, any real geek would have thought up a Monty Python reference.
--Lenny, who owns a dachshund
You wouldn't; vacuum is a perfect insulator.
There wouold approximately 0 heat dissipation due to convection.
Your chip would cook itself almost immediately.
Even if I were in a vacuum right now, I would still be comfortable in terms of temperature because I would be radiating heat away approximately fast as I was absorbing it. Besides, if space is so warm, why do the astronauts have heating devices in the suits they wear for EVMs?
Yes, space is as warm as I think, at least when the sun is shining upon you. When you are in sunlight, the radiant heat which you absorb is quite enormous, quite a good deal more than you radiate away, even if you have good thermal transfer between your "light" side and your "dark" side. The amount of heat which you radiate away is fairly constant, no matter how much radiant heat you are absorbing at a given time.
If you were in a vacuum, and you weren't in space, you could be correct, however, in space, in the presence of a heat radiating body, such as the sun, will increase your temperature enormously, in the absence of such a thing, you eventually radiate all your heat away, save what little heat is transferred to you by collisions with the few molecules that are present in interplanetary space.
IIRC, they're not heaters, but more "temperature regulators." Basically they either absorb heat or generate heat as necessary to keep the intrepid spacewalker from burning up at 400 degrees if he's in sunlight, or pretty much freezing to death in the event that he's in shade. However, most particles that one finds in space tend to be highly energetic, since they tend to move at a good fraction of the speed of light. However, there are very few of them per unit volume, and so one's trusty thermometer becomes decidedly un-trusty, and registers a temperature reading somewhere below -200F, unless, of course, the probe is in direct sunlight, in which case, depending on the design, the matter which makes up the probe gets nice and hot and registers quite a warm temperature.
In the end, the "temperature" in space doesn't really apply anyway, since temperature is a measure of the energy level of a molecule, and space has no molecules. The only reason Earth has a temperature is of course because all of the molecules have a temperature, and the density of those molecules is such that they tend to bang into the temperature sensing device quite a lot.
Hope that clears it up, -Nathan
Care about freedom?
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
And what happens when their Winblows box blue screens?
Duct tape and velcro are holding our space program together?
Remember Apollo 13?
Remember Apollo 1? Velcro in a high-pressure, high-oxygen environment is what turned a small spark into a fire that killed three astronauts.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Although inhabitants of nearby planets might catch a brief flash...
A conventional mouse relies on gravity to work.. take away the gravity, the mouse becomes useless
If you need proof, try this:
Turn your mouse upside down (or on its' side, any orientation that's not normal), and place a book over the bottom, then move the book around.. you'll notice that the screen pointer doesn't move..
Ball point pens don't work in zero G either, for similar reasons.
Optical mice would be a different story
how much could you over clock a processor in the coldness of space?
Not much, cooling devices for CPUs rely on conductive and convective methods of transferring heat away from the CPU. In the vacuum, which I imagine is what you meant by the 'coldness of space' the only available method of heat transfer is radiative. And for a running CPU this isn't much.
:wq
"nothing mission critical is run on them."
No system is "mission critical" until the mission relies on it.
History has shown that it can come down the the number of plastic bags on board. If these systems are "unimportant" to the mission then why are they on board?
So they're somewhere between "useless mass" and "mission critical." Sooner or later, a mission's success may hinge on the operation of some or all of the computers onboard, perhaps to a purpose that was not forseen in the mission planning phases.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I would expect that in 0 or low gravity, designers would be free of many of the constraints operating on Earth-bound computers.
Laptops? I would have imagined thinks like that personal assistant floating ball that Slashdot said NASA found in Star Wars.
Imagine computers around you, portables, projection screens, holograms, keyboards on your trousers, shaped as a ball, a tube, wahtever, but no laptops.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu