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Several Student-Led Experiments To Fly On Endeavour
Phoghat writes "STS-134, the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour – is set to carry several experiments of students from the middle school, high school and collegiate levels. Two of these payloads are sponsored by the NASA Florida. The first experiment is one that could provide some guidance on future long-duration space flight missions, it deals with seed germination. As missions take astronauts further and further away from Earth, they will need to be able to produce their own food. Learning everything possible about the effects of micro-gravity on seeds therefore is viewed as relevant and important research. Another experiment, one comprised of squid embryos is being spearheaded by the University of Florida and will research the physiological impact of the micro-gravity environment on the animal's growth and development."
This space chicken tastes just like squid!
which is totally what she said
In *space!*
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Is it only for the benefits of the students, or are you telling me that NASA waited until the very last shuttle launch to test something as important as seed germination in space?
And now, for the Slashdot cliché: screw the damn squids, they'll come back as giant evil overlords because of the space radiation or something...
As missions take astronauts further and further away from Earth,
ORLY? When's that happening?
they will need to be able to produce their own food.
For a long mission, say Mars, is it more efficient to just pack some sort of dense food or grow your own? You need more than seeds- growing medium, fertilizer, etc. You need to devote space for growing. I suppose you also get oxygen production for your efforts.
If you're taking a permanent presences, say something substantial at L4/L5, well, OK then.
It's because computer power isn't the biggest hurdle in space travel. Cheap and effective propulsion is the problem, and we only have marginal improvements compared to 40 years ago.
Err, about that computer stuff...
The smaller processors are actually somewhat of a bigger hazard. These things known as cosmic rays (and simila) tend to occasionally wreck delicate bits such as living cells and microscopic transistors. While no big deal down here on Earth, it is a big deal in space - w/o the big magnetic shield that the Earth currently enjoys, there's a whole lot more cosmic rays out there, than there are down here.
Back in the day, the computer parts were spread relatively far apart, and even on-die, the transistors were a pretty good distance from each other. This meant that it would take quite a bit to wreck something, especially considering that (IIRC) the systems were redundant.
If you were to take up an off-the-shelf Core i7 (only for example) and try to use that for something vital, one even half-lucky shot by a cosmic ray could blow a register, or cause the thing to fry. You could certainly put together a system with multiple redundancies (aircraft and even spacecraft computers do this all the time - it only makes sense to), but again, the shielding, redundancy, and various other requirements that come with space travel usually mean that, even with modern techniques, you still end up with something a goodly distance behind the bleeding edge of Moore's Law.
(Not even seeing them use x86 (or even PPC) architecture, either... maybe MIPS, but I suspect that whatever they use, the architecture is probably built from scratch, especially for the job... not exactly something you can just buy 1,000 of from Intel or AMD, yanno? I could be wrong, but I suspect it's pretty custom, right down to the architecture).
Also, IIRC, the programming requirements are hellishly strict, and that they try to keep things as simple and short-pathed as humanly possible, if only to reduce any chance of bugs and/or outright failure. This means you don't need a Beowulf cluster of Nehalems to run the thing. :)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?