NASA Teams To Build Gyroscopes 1,000X More Sensitive Than Current Systems

coondoggie writes "NASA today said it would work with a team of researchers on a three-year, $1.8 project to build gyroscope systems that are more than 1,000 times as sensitive as those in use today. The Fast Light Optical Gyroscope project will marry researchers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center; the US Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center and Northwestern University to develop gyroscopes that could find their way into complex spacecraft, aircraft, commercial vehicles or ships in the future."

Comments

1.8

[sentientbeing]

A 1.8 dollar project. Man. NASA must really love those budget cuts

Re:1.8

[Spy Handler]

hey man, $1.8 goes a long way in China.

Re:1.8

[Bill Dimm]

A 1.8 dollar project. Man. NASA must really love those budget cuts

The "team of researchers" is actually a bunch of grad students -- they'll have money left over when the project is completed.

Re:1.8

[Glarimore]

I'd mod you up if you had said Russia, seeing as we now pay them ~63 million per astronaut we send.

Re:1.8

[wvmarle]

I'd mod you up if you had said Russia, seeing as we now pay them ~63 million per astronaut we send.

Which is well cheaper than using the Space Shuttle. I assume at least this is the ticket for a round trip, to and from the surface of the earth.

The Shuttle, with the philosophy of having a re-usable and thus cost effective vehicle, cost about $450 mln per launch according to Wikipedia, and could carry a maximum of eight astronauts, though usually less. One pilot and one commander to fly the thing who also have to bring it down leaves up to six astronauts that can be exchanged with crew on the ISS, or 75 mln per passenger. In case of the more common crew of seven, it'd be 90 mln.

Put inflation in the mix, and this Russian price tag is looking very interesting compared to NASAs in-house offering.

And that's while the Russian space agency is also government paid, like NASA, so a private company will likely be able to do it for even less.

Re:1.8

[hairyfeet]

Good God man....that won't even pay for the pizza, much less the Mountain Dew!

Re:1.8

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, they'll blow it all on popcorn. Popcorn.....and revenge!

Re:1.8

[PerMolestiasEruditio]

Shuttle cost $209 billion over it's life, 134 missions. $1.6 billion per flight.
http://www.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-promises-209-billion.html
So more like $200 million per Astronaut on Shuttle.

Russia sells flights to ISS for ~$50 million (Sarah Brightman), though used to be cheaper ($20 million for Mark Shuttleworth).
SpaceX is targeting $20 million per person for its Dragon Capsule

Re:1.8

[Big Hairy Ian]

Typical /.

An article that's full of spin :)

Re:1.8

[Gr8Apes]

Not so fast - $209B in 2010 $? Really? Where's the original cost statements? NASA's own site says $450M per launch, but that probably doesn't include amortized R&D costs, so I'd imagine it's higher if you include that. Then again, should we also include the X program? It was the precursor research for the shuttle after all. What about the Apollo program itself? It provided LOX engine research. There's also the solid rocket fuel for the boosters. Etc etc etc. An easily inflated number without backing data and vague hand-waving about "adjusted" dollars.

The real numbers we have are what NASA posted for the last missions - $450M per flight. There is no information on what that includes that I found, and this is higher than that posted in wikipedia which bases its numbers on this document which has some more interesting information in it about competing launch systems in the Shuttle class. Note that not all are manned, and yet the shuttle is within a factor of 3 at most on a per Kg cost. It also details information on the shuttle launch costs based on pulling it from the full NASA budget, which indicates the most expensive estimate is $500M per launch. The wikipedia link also details the costs of a Saturn launch and cost per Kg. The Shuttle was only slightly more expensive, and an order of magnitude more capable by this comparison (We'll ignore the piece about Saturn being able to reach the moon, the Shuttle was never designed for that purpose)

Lastly, we have the issue about politics interfering with the Shuttle program. A much cheaper shuttle could have been built with an accompanying heavy launch vehicle for less than the Shuttle. It probably would have been safer too, as it would not have had a Challenger incident, as solid rocket boosters would not have been needed. But that's a tangent into what ifs, it should merely be noted that the Shuttle was not the result of engineering design for a purpose, but of politics adding conflicting requirements and then not funding those requirements.

*$1.8 million contract

[MassiveForces]

According to NASA's site, the contract is $1.8 million - just in case you thought NASA might be able to spend $1.8 billion on something like that... http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2012/12-111.html

I think they should focus on cheaper space pens*



*(I kid, I kid!)

Re:*$1.8 million contract

[jittles]

Gyroscopes are very very important to the maintenance and operation of all aircraft, as well as inertial navigation systems. For instance, gyroscopes help you to determine where you are when your GPS has failed, or if GPS does not exist. I'm not sure how useful that would be with space, I'm no physicist. But they also use gyroscopes to make sure mechanical parts are still operating within specification. This allows them to use the part until it falls out of spec, instead of replacing a part every 500 flight hours because they know the part will last at least that long. It saves the government a ton of money, and they're trying to roll them out wherever possible. The gyros are also helpful when an in-flight failure occurs, often helping the computer diagnose the exact problem. This allows the pilot to more accurately determine whether he needs to make an emergency landing, or RTB. The big push for this all happened after Blackhawk Down, and the pilots who crashed because they did not realize their tail rotor was about to fail. That is the exact sort of failure a gyroscope could have warned them about.

Spacecraft, aircraft, commercial vehicles...

[Areyoukiddingme]

And... missiles. Don't forget the missiles. In fact, let's just be clear here. This is for missiles. Spacecraft will be damned lucky to get any of these, and aircraft aren't getting them at all, nevermind unspecified "commercial vehicles." Missiles and drones will get these and nothing else. NASA will have to beg for an intentionally crippled version in order to get gear that isn't classified, for use on spacecraft.

Re:Spacecraft, aircraft, commercial vehicles...

[bmo]

If this was just for missiles, you wouldn't hear about it. Indeed, it would have gone to a no-bid contract in a brown paper bag in the dead of night behind the dumpster at the McDonalds around the corner from Textron, Lockheed, or Raytheon.

There are a *lot* of civilian applications for a sensitive gyroscope.

--
BMO

Re:Spacecraft, aircraft, commercial vehicles...

[Areyoukiddingme]

Probably not so much in game controllers. These aren't MEMS devices. They're large heavy mechanical things. They're neither small nor light enough to cram into a controller or a phone. The smallest thing mentioned in the article is a "tabletop" gravitational wave detector.

Re:Spacecraft, aircraft, commercial vehicles...

[Firethorn]

Our current generation ICBMS are already capable of hitting within 50 meters of the programmed target. When Cheyenne Mountain was built, it was built to withstand close nuclear detonation from missiles where detonating within a kilometer was more the expected accuracy.

We can hit Cheyenne Mountain style facilities directly enough to destroy them already. That's without getting into fancy stuff like the nuclear deep penetrators we have locked up somewhere.

Re:Spacecraft, aircraft, commercial vehicles...

[Neil Boekend]

Did you miss the notice? Actually using nukes is out of style. Governments only threaten to use them.
No these will be useful in conventional bombs/missiles. If you have 1 meter accuracy then the explosive force can be less, so the civilian casualties can be less so there are less embarrassing images to show on TV.

Re:Spacecraft, aircraft, commercial vehicles...

[jgtg32a]

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-01-31/

Re:And cheap, too

[mianne]

Here's $5.. I'll take two. Keep the change!

Crap article

[Animats]

Crap article, from a crap blog, copied from a press release. It's so Slashdot.

Here's the actual paper on the research. The physics is interesting. It's a way to make optical gyros better. Currently, good fiber-optic gyros have drift rates around 1 degree per hour. Ring laser gyros can do better, and mechanical gyros still beat the optical systems on long-term drift. This proposal is to develop a way to get a few more orders of magnitude less drift out of optical gyros.

Low-end MEMS gyros have drift rates of several degrees per minute, but there's steady progress, and degrees-per-hour MEMS gyros now exist.

I wonder how their children will turn out...

[PerlPunk]

The Fast Light Optical Gyroscope project will marry researchers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center; the US Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center and Northwestern University

Re:I wonder how their children will turn out...

[wonkey_monkey]

I wonder how their children will turn out...

They'll be fine. They'll have a stable environment.

Re:That's some salary

[king neckbeard]

I'm not a big fan of Greek food anyway.