Fwd: Naked Mini Broke

From: Jim Arnott <jrasite_at_eoni.com>
Date: Sat Feb 3 10:54:20 2001

I saw an article somewhere that much of NASA's stuff is hosted on
obsolete hardware. One of the problems that is being run into is the
danger of losing contact with deep space probes due to the lack of 1.)
hardware and 2.) experienced personnel to operate said hardware.
Specifically the article was addressing the likelihood that sometime
within the next couple of years JPL was expecting to lose contact with
Pioneer 10 due to said circumstances. It would be an almost impossible
task to rewrite and recertify all the code to run on a later system.
Hence, LSIs and early pdps are the systems that *must* be used.

Regarding the Orbiter; Remember that the shuttles are a 1970's design.
 Certifying hardware for space is an incredibly tedious and expensive
process. I believe that exactly one of them has had their systems
updated to about 1995 specs a few years ago.

As a point of interest. The Apollo missions were flown on 64k of
memory. Mag core memory.

Search for 'Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design' and pay special
attention to the last one. "Space is a completely unforgiving
environment. If you screw up the
engineering, SOMEBODY DIES!"

Jim

Iggy Drougge wrote:
>
> Sellam Ismail skrev:
>
> >On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, James Willing wrote:
>
> >> >I'm a tech at United Space Alliance in Cape Canaveral Florida. I have a
> >> >Computer Automation LSI 2 computer that doesn't boot up and I'm not sure
> >> >why. We use this computer to run automated tests on the space shuttle Ku
> >> >band comm systems and need to get it fixed fairly quickly. Can you help?
> >> >if so, drop me a line and we'll see if we can work something out.
>
> >Holy crap. Why is an aerospace company still using such an old-assed
> >computer? Anyway, I may be able to help them.
>
> What's wrong with old-arsed computer anyway???
> BTW, I read somewhere that the space shuttle actually used core memory,
> apparently due to the bad resistance towards radiation in older IC memory.
> Could anyone confirm whether this still holds true?
Received on Sat Feb 03 2001 - 10:54:20 GMT