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Orion Capsule Safely Recovered, Complete With 12-Year-Old Computer Guts
Lucas123 writes While NASA's Orion spacecraft, which blasted off on a successful test flight today, may be preparing for a first-of-its-kind mission to carry astronauts to Mars and other deep-space missions, the technology inside of it is no where near leading edge. In fact, its computers and its processors are 12 years old — making them ancient in tech years. The spacecraft, according to one NASA engineer, is built to be rugged and reliable in the face of G forces, massive amounts of radiation and the other rigors of space."Compared to the [Intel] Core i5 in your laptop, it's much slower — much less powerful. It's probably not any faster than your smartphone," Matt Lemke, NASA's deputy manager for Orion's avionics, power and software team, told Computerworld. Lemke said the spacecraft was built to be rugged and reliable — not necessarily smart. That's why there are two flight computers. Orion's main computer was built by Honeywell as a flight computer originally for Boeing's 787 jet airliner.
Not only was the launch itself successful, but the sensor-laden craft's splashdown was smooth ("bulls-eye," as NASA puts it), and NASA has now recovered the capsule. ABC News has some good photos, too.
In fact, its computers and its processors are 12 years old
They word it like NASA is dumpster diving for its flight computers these days. The CPU may be from what was new 12 years ago, but I seriously doubt the physical unit is actually 12 years old.
It's also hardened against radiation. I would be willing to bet that any processor in these systems will still be functional long after most newfangled home CPUs are long dead. These flight computers will be remain functional in an extremely harsh environment longer than any home CPU would last. Even with how pampered home processors are in comparison.
Thank god the English language doesn't have multiple meanings for a word. It would be so awful if we were able to have multiple different types of engineers for different areas. Pretty soon even the guy who drives a train is going to want to be called an engineer.
. At least then the Saturn V launch rocket was being tested as well.
The early Apollo test missions were on a Saturn 1B
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
There's a difference between hard radiation and intense radiation. A single hard radiation event can cause a CPU to go into the woods. The same single event in a human can destroy a cell, which the body can usually replace without any noticeable impact on performance.
Exactly.
Rocket science ain't ... uh... never mind. But it doesn't take a lot of computing power to navigate. But what it takes is computers that can withstand the stress. Extreme acceleration, radiation, possibly temperature changes, unreliable power supply and so on. When you only need one percent of the processing power of a modern CPU, you don't care about having only 10% of the current CPU power available. But it is very comforting to hear "works from 3-5V, logic accepts up to 6V on its I/Os without damage" instead of "if you're off by 0.2V, unpredictable behaviour might occur, be off by 0.5 and it's going poof".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The people designing the experiments apparently are fine with that, so it can't be that bad.
Some of the stuff is that bad, but if you have a fixed budget and you have the choice of doing a lesser experiment with more certainty that it will 100% get the data you want, vs a broader experiment with more data, a risk of failure but a crew standing by to hand-hold the problem and nurture the equipment back to life, then you typically go with the latter option.
There's a reason unmanned equipment is treated differently to manned equipment, especially aboard the ISS where you can always send up a replacement piece with the next crew.
Yeah, I remember all those NASA launches where they soft-landed the first stage and reused it.
Oh, hang on, NASA talked about it a lot, but never did. The closest they got was reusing the metal shell around the SRBs, which probably cost more than it saved, since the fuel made up almost the entire cost of the SRBs.
If SpaceX is just 'taking ideas and engineering and research' from NASA, how did they manage to build a new rocket engine and two new rockets and launch them into space for less than NASA spent on putting a dummy stage on top of a Shuttle SRB and launching it into the ocean? How did they manage to develop their capsule and launch it to the space station with cargo for far less than NASA has spent just to build this one and launch it for a brief stay in orbit?
From what I've read, Orion is expected to cost nearly $10 billion before it flies into space with humans on board. That's around the cost of four or five trips to the Moon on a Saturn V. SLS will cost another $10 billion or more, even though it was supposed to be cheap because it was 'shuttle derived'. Cost per pound to orbit will probably be at least 10x as much as an expendable Falcon Heavy, if SpaceX get that to work.
Don't laugh. NEVER laugh. You'd be bitching if they were out in the streets in gangs, stealing your stuff, vandalizing your property, or any of that other shit old people complain about. Instead, you have a youth who has a desire to learn and invent something which will hopefully lead them into being a productive member of society instead of serving 20 to life for cooking meth. Young folks, especially in the high school age range, are easily discouraged and you ridiculing them about being too hipster or whatever will only alienate them. When faced with this situation, I will show them how to blink that LED with their Arduino, then show them how to blink it over a USB port with their gaming rig, then show them how to blink it with a mechanical cam switch (old points distributors work great for that fyi). If I've got some lying around, I'll show them how to blink it with some vacuum tubes! What you have to do is find out why they chose to do it the way the are doing it (typically because that's all they know) and then show them all the choices available, why you'd use each one in a different application, and show them why they get to use that Arduino now instead of wire wrapping an 1802 on perfboard. The key to all of this, I've found, is maintaining the balance between lengthy enough to get the concept across but short enough to keep them from picking up their phone and tweeting their facepage.
/. is always posting stories about how we need more STEM graduates, more hardware hackers, and more programmers. A lot of folks here agree with that sentiment and perhaps you've said as much in the past, so please, don't ever laugh at them. They're sensitive.
Besides, grandpa, you should be happy the hipster Makers are doing what they do. Thanks to steampunk, vacuum tubes(especially nixies) are making a huge come back. I have a USB vacuum tube audio amp similar to this. You couldn't buy that shit when we were kids. You had that 100lb behemoth amp that made the house lights dim when the bass hit, and kept your room 80deg during the coldest of winters. And that was if you had a good bit of money. If you had a little money you might be able to buy a Heathkit. Otherwise, like me, you cobbled together some barely functional and noisy bullshit from an old guitar amp and a half working tube powered CB radio. Now you can get something handheld portable for a hundred bucks with the further satisfaction that your "dying" craft is actually living on and they'll need people like you to teach the new gen.
The overall point is, no matter how they get to the destination, what really matters is that they're taking the journey. Time itself will teach them when they need to blink that LED with an RPi or if they need to use a couple transistors.
DISCLAIMER: I am dense at times. If "laugh at" was just a figure of speech, please don't take the post personally- perhaps someone else can be inspired.