Laff. There's a very good reason for that, interestingly. Solar EMI radiation is a bigger risk to newer components due to the smaller "transistor" size. So for critical systems you need to completely test any hardware you plan to use. The budget for NASA hasn't permitted that level of testing and nobody really wants to invest money in the aging shuttle fleet, so they continue to use the designed components. The crew usually ends up broadcasting data back to ground stations anyway, so outside of a few non-essential laptops that get carried onboard there isn't really much of a need for the latest in embedded components.

What you're referring to is a beowulf cluster, ie: using low-end distributed hardware to emulate high-end systems. Google it, it's a good concept to know. Distributed computing will be one of the biggest areas of comp research over the next few decades, so get used to seeing the terms.

can we get a nerd translator please?

quote:Originally posted by LoCuTiS

can we get a nerd translator please?


Sorry, I know. Enough of the geek-speak...[:D]

quote:Originally posted by Singularity

Laff. There's a very good reason for that, interestingly. Solar EMI radiation is a bigger risk to newer components due to the smaller "transistor" size. So for critical systems you need to completely test any hardware you plan to use. The budget for NASA hasn't permitted that level of testing and nobody really wants to invest money in the aging shuttle fleet, so they continue to use the designed components. The crew usually ends up broadcasting data back to ground stations anyway, so outside of a few non-essential laptops that get carried onboard there isn't really much of a need for the latest in embedded components.

What you're referring to is a beowulf cluster, ie: using low-end distributed hardware to emulate high-end systems. Google it, it's a good concept to know. Distributed computing will be one of the biggest areas of comp research over the next few decades, so get used to seeing the terms.



And my friends laughed at me when I put these all together

The late Bill Macbeth who was the Senior Engineer investigating the Challenger launch explosion was chosen to present the findings for the Thiokol Corporation. The message that Macbeth delivered to the media was slightly different than what happened in reality and he was disturbed by the difference between the message he was ordered to deliver and what really happened. Thiokol had sent message to abort the launch due to cold weather conditions and even though lots of 'anti-freeze' was pumped into the 'splash pool' the order came from the White House at the time to go ahead with the launch as it was 'window of opportunity' for about next month...it was launched and the entire world saw the results. DC wanted the political pump for a successful launch and forget who was in office at the time. The 'splash pool' had the ice forming on it skimmed off up to the moment of launch. Add the element of 'wind shear' into the equation and you have the perfect recipe for DISASTER! Willing to bet this is first time most of you have heard about that disaster from this slant....

Then came the Columbia messup and similar warnings were sent from the engineers who had built the shuttles and worked with them over the years...and yet again someone in DC wanted the launch for political reasons...

Going back to another issue why we never really got the space station working is that one of the early cuts in the NASA program was an unmanned shuttle designed to launch material into orbit and then a manned launch would follow it and assemble the material...then fly the 'dump truck' back down for another load. How stupid can politicians be screwing up a good plan...and blowing away dedicated folks who believed in the 'DREAM'?

frakk... I probably ranted in the wrong forum thread for the correct reasons so please move last comment to the correct thread or make a new one? PS...will I get banned if I start making comments about former EVIL politicians and compare them to our current ones? [}:)]

hmm...Trying to justify my earlier ramble.... Think it was Commodore 64 that was used to go to the moon and back during the almost failure of the return flight of Apollo 13 (sic)? Whatever # of the mission was the final reentry path was manually set using visual sighting sent from Houston and the Flight Commander set course on an X marked on the view portal...then fired reentry thrusters on command from Houston.... The rest is history....