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Linux Rocket Blasts Off This Fall

Posted by timothy on from the fwooooooof dept.

HardcoreGamer writes "An Oregon amateur rocket group, the Portland State Aerospace Society, plans to launch a Linux-powered rocket weighing 12 pounds to 55,000 feet at a speed of Mach 3 in September, Wired News reports. The rocket's onboard computer is an AMD 586 processor and a Jumptec MOPS/520 PC/104+ board along with a power supply, a PCMCIA card carrier for an 802.11b card to transmit data to the ground, and a carrier board for a 128-MB CompactFlash card for long-term storage. The flight computer runs a stripped-down version of Debian Linux, with the 2.4.20 Linux kernel. The group will present a paper (HTML | PDF ) on the use of free software in rocketry at Usenix 2003. The real question is whether their network card will survive 10 seconds at 15 Gs!"

9 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Definitely on topic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    First post. Yay for me.

    1. Re:Definitely on topic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      We're all very happy for you.

    2. Re:Definitely on topic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      sorry, better luck next time though. These first posts can be really hard to get. But with luck and dedication, you too can join the ranks of FP losers, myself included.

  2. This just in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Slashdot editor reads 12 hour old news from wired.com.

  3. Re:IANARS but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    IANARS

    haha hey fuckstick.. Does it take that much energy to type fattie ?

  4. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Nah, Columbia has that covered already.

  5. Re:Slashdot powered! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    You have a gaydick in your mouth. Please pay more attention!

  6. Re:15Gs, no problem! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    You threw your card at 4 times the speed of sound? I CALL BULLSHIT!
    You FECKING liar!

  7. linux powered linux powered post by tbl · · Score: 1, Troll

    THIS JUST IN:
    man to use linux powered dildo to reach all the way to the top of his colon!