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Air Force Extends Plug-and-Play Spacecraft

Posted by timothy on from the can-we-get-an-analogy-upgrade? dept.

coondoggie writes "Looking to build strategic satellites in days if need be, rather than months, the Air Force is pushing forward with what it calls plug-and-play spacecraft. This week it awarded a $500,000 order to Northrop Grumman to begin designing the plug-and-play spacecraft 'bus' which will offer standard interfaces for a variety of payload components, much like a laptop computer that immediately recognizes new hardware when it's plugged in, Northrop stated. The order was awarded under a contract that has a ceiling of $200 million."

1 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Re:USB analogy is a big bogus by mysidia · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The device you plug into is a single point of failure anyways (potentially). If the same device exposes a DHCP equivalent to its direct ports, and handles inter-plugin-device addressing properly (when multiple plugin-devices interconnect), then the DHCP equivalent's not an additional point of failure.

    Also, DHCP doesn't have to be a single point of failure even on a LAN -- multiple DHCP servers can be used, with a supernet split according to the 80/20 rule.

    Also, unless the static IP addresses are of the IPv6 sort, or EUI-64/48 (64-bit or 48-bit MAC addresses), there is a point of failure introduced -- as in the equivalent of an IP conflict.