Back to the Moon

starexplorer2001 writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA's planned trip back to the Moon isn't without a significant amount of science and technological innovation. Simply 'sponging off Apollo' won't do it. Among the issues: safer human spaceflight, lunar ice, sustainability, robotic scouting missions and more. This won't be easy."

Comments

AMD or Intel

[zenst]

You have to ask if they will use Intel or AMD chips to power this lander. But as we all know (geek wise) they use chips which have truely tried and tested with no hidded gotcha FPU bugs or the like. they also like chips with large tracks unlike the ever decreasing die size due to beyond a certain size the chips tracks become suseptable to the more exotic matter buzzing around space and large chip tracks can take a full on hit and still leave enough wifth for the electricity top flow. They also prefer ultra redundancy and iirc the shuttle currently has 4 onboard computers with a 5th back at ground control all running the same software at the same time and checking each others results (I'm sure somebody could give a more exacting account).

So given all that do people expect to see an AMD chip in space, I would imagine that running the same x86 code on an INTEl,AMD,and selection of the many other X86 based CPU's would be a reliable way to compare and iliminate CPU errors on many levels.

As for going to the moon, well beyond seeing a Ghostbusters size marshmellow man walking on the surface, they will never convince the sceptics they ever went there.

Some argue that if we could go there then we should be on the mars by now.

But think of this, the moon project was born out of the cold war and was driven politicaly.

Today moon projects although still driven politicaly are more driven scientificaly. This means that safty and assurances of a perfect mission become more of a factor as well as costs. That alone puts how daring the first moon mission actualy was.

Some compare the first moon landing to the flight of the wright brothers. Now would you fly in one of those planes today, hell no.

It is only now that we can saftly and reliably technology wise afford to look at the moon. Also remember that it is also what we do there that has also been advanced technologywise. Even doing simple deep drill core samples would of been totaly unviable in the early days due to space suit design alone, heck maybe still unviable today but at least we will be able to build a semi automated rig that dosn't weigh more than the craft taking it there.

I await the conspiracy theories; That only now that AMD has a proven track record in doing x86 chips, are we able to go back to the moon :D.

Re:One more irreverent comment

[spun]

Any GWB loyalists left out there?
Maybe a few, but most of them are keeping a pretty low profile these days. The smart ones have deserted him and the average ones are keeping their mouths shut, it's only the stupid ones that are vocally supporting the man now.

On slashdot they have been reduced to the "Yeah, well Clinton did it too!" argument every time their boy is exposed in a new set of scandals. It would be kind of funny if it weren't my country he's fucking up.