Stuka Stunt Main Forum · 38 of 38 known posts recovered
Steve
You may turn out to be right, but I think you're really jumping the gun. They have an anomaly - but not one that is necessarily fatal. They are working the problem. This sort of thing is not unusual.
Brett
Randy Powell
Brett
We also got into fault tolerant designs, voting circuits, and all that stuff which eats up real estate with three times the logic circuitry.. Interesting problems, of course. But designing hi rel stuff is not very glamorous using 20 and 30 year old (space qualified) parts.
And developing software, which is not a fit occupation for a human being (quote me!) to start with, is truly painful. While most programmers go mad or are already mad, the hi rel folks do so in record short time. Poor cats!
Tell me it is somehow different or better nowadays!
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"Ah, mind-taxing time again, is it?" -Marvin
I take it the fault protection software is too conservative and shuts the whole thing down at the slightest sign of trouble. Can it reboot itself?
Steve
I will say those are really neat pictures tho.
Later,
Tim
This one too!
Yeah, right.I'd love to live on Mars. All that room for flying circles! 
Randy Powell
So what if Mars has 400mph winds? There are no trees to cause turbulence! 
Here's a dissenting opinion: Things like this (the Mars program, not to mention sending Men back to the Moon and beyond) may not yield immediate benefits that will trickle down to you and I - heck, in this context the word "immediate" may have to be taken in the context of decades or even centuries, but that doesn't necessarily mean the efforts are not worthwhile. It doesn't even (necessarily) mean the efforts are not worth the money spent. The original Apollo program yielded benefits many people don't associate with the Space program, like computers (at least many advances), (micro)-miniaturization, freeze-dried food products (okay, maybe that one is not a benefit...), not to mention a huge amount of pure scientific knowledge. Probably most of the information and insight gained during that program has yet to truly pay off. Note that I'm speaking as a layman here - I'm not even remotely a scientist, but science has always held a fascination for me.
Many people feel that Science already "knows" that star travel is totally impossible forever, due to the limitations of the physical universe in which we find ourselves (i.e. nothing can travel faster than light). However, the more data we get about our surroundings and the rules that govern them, the more likely it is that we will eventually make a discovery that will make such things not only possible, but simple. However, if we fail to make the investments necessary in the short term, we will never get the benefits in the long term. Perhaps that's an altruistic sentiment, since the beneficiaries may be centuries in the future, but isn't that part of what it is to be Human?
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program...
That's OK, when we get to Mars with a manned flight, we'll have to get permission from the Chinese to land.
Randy Powell
Homelessness and job loss is completely disconnected in any way at all from developing Mars probes. If you killed every single space exploration program tomorrow, how would that help any "social problem"? Social problems are not a function of how much is spent on them - more money does not yield more results.
In any case, the budget of NASA is piddling tiny in the big scheme of things. NASA's budget is something like 15 billion a year. That seems like a lot of money to you and me, but it's simply nothing in the big scheme of things. I have worked individual military space programs that were FAR more than that. In fact, I have worked on a program that OVERRAN that much. And it's literally negligible in the federal social programs budget - well less than 1%. Of NASA's budget, the shuttle takes the lion's share - something a little under half. The end-to-end cost of the MER program, including developing and building them, both spacecraft, launching them, and everything, was about $850 million spread over about 5 years. That's way less than a months social security.
Take the 15 billion, throw it back into the general fund, and it's like peeing in the Pacific ocean.
Brett
This is sort of true. You're right in that more money doesn't equal less problems. But the reason isn't because more money wouldn't help. It's because, much like NASA, more money to social problems tends to just produce more bureaucrats, more "system" and more auditors telling the same people actually doing the work what to do. Classically, when the budget is increased, they actually decrease the number of people actually involved in trying to make things better.
As with NASA, what is needed isn't so much more money (though more money is nice...makes a lot of things easier) as a change in how the money si spent. And without political morons dictating changes to the people that have some idea of what they are doing.
Randy Powell
Note: Sorry. I've been listening to CPA's all week telling me how to run a clinical program. I'm of the verge of homicide.
I am greatly in favor of space exploration. The other night a friend who probably knows mentioned that he didn't like the way things were being planned, some specific approaches being taken, but those are side issues to me. Let's just agree to go, and then we'll pack the car!
The effect of gravity is far, far faster than light. So fast as to be assumed instantaneous over distances much greater than between our sun and the earth, for example.
Now what that has to do with anything I'm not sure, but it does show that I actually (sometimes) read those National (We Be Weenies) Geographics someone in my family continues to gift me over the years.
Dan
I do remember reading something about "gravity waves", way way back in the distant 80's (Omni magazine - I used to have every issue from the first one through about 5 years), but that kind of stuff is WAY beyond my meagre cranial processing powers. I can barely get my mind around inverted flight! 
Who knows what discoveries await us. Since I expect to live to at least 110, I hope to hear about the early stages of some of them. Exciting stuff!
I do, however, lament the inevitable sacrifices - for instance, I recently read that there will be no more maintenance missions to the Hubble telescope, as the resources are needed for other programs (Moon 2010), so it will, presumably, become useless in as little as 3 or 4 years. That is a shame! Hopefully when they get back to the Moon, they will bring a decent 'scope to mount on the dark side, to make the Hubble seem like a magnifying glass by comparison...
The other Tim, There was a big push to shut down the original Moon missions because just too many folks were going hungry, out of work, starving children and all that rot. We cancelled it and guess what? They are all still out there, PLUS some NASA personnel. There will always be children going hungry, people out of work and general mayhem because unfortunately there will always be a certain percentage of people out there that are sick, twisted or just jerks. This is not to say that there won't be people displaced from jobs from time to time, I've been through a couple bouts of that in the last 2 years, but it isn't a permanent condition, it just seems like it at the time.
Oh and one more thing, Exploration and the same objections to funding it have been going on since we decided to take a walk to the other side of the hill. Anyone remember how many places Columbus had to go before he got funding for his trip? That was a big waste of time and expenses too. Same old same old my friend. The future is out there, don't be afraid to take the first steps.
From somewhere near Parkville, Mo.
William Crane
AMA 6733
That one really ticked me off. I've been receiving
the Space Telescope Science Institute Newsletter
for over a decade. I'm a long time amateur astronomer,
and the Hubble might possibly be the most significant
piece of astronomical hardware ever built.
However, there is a successor in the works.
It's called the James Webb Space Telescope.
However, it will operate in the Infrared, not
visible light. Also, it will not be in earth
orbit, but at the L2 Lagrange point, about a
million miles from earth. Tentative launch
is in 2011.
The AP-101, sort of a cut-down 360.
Code's written in a language called Hal/S.
Preston
But, they aren't burdened with MicroBloat or other interactive GUI functions that such up so much CPU. I worked on one of the more complex spacecraft software projects ever done, and we used a machine that does 200,000 flops/sec, and had a total of 384K bytes of memory. Not meg, K, like 1024. We didn't come close to using it all, and it's a real-time processor running complex control laws at 10 Hz.
The requirements for interactive/GUI computers are simply apples, and embedded processing/Assembly code level are oranges. A 68040 is far, far more than any onboard space application needs, and computer power is in no way limiting what any project does. 100x the processing power wouldn't help anything.
Actually, on my current project, we are using the same processor as the MER rovers.
Brett
That's not some bureacratic rule. It's practical common sense and experience for high rel applications. Getting electronic components to work reliably in space is extremely difficult. Fly your newest Dell - it won't last 5 minutes in that environment!
A single space qualified microprocessor (a SIMPLE one, say an 8051) might cost $15K or more per device. The thing has to stand up to extremes in temperature, vibration, voltage ranges, even radiation. Most any conventional high density integrated circuit gets eaten alive. NASA flew some test circuits in BALLOONS over Antarctica, and they experienced literally thousands of "upset" events, caused by memory chips losing data bits. In some cases, the exposure will permanently damage the device in short order. I've seen instances of conventional microprocessor-based controllers getting literally hundreds on reboots when they put them up on high altitude research balloons (~150K feet).
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In spite of the best efforts, things still happen, as with the Mars Rover. Don't write it off, however, some very creative solutions have been accomplished in the past to get crippled spacecraft working again, and extending their life for many years. All those fabulous detailed flyby photographs of the outer planets and their rings and moons were acquired with a spacecraft whose high gain antenna never properly deployed.
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"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." -Richard Feynman, from the Challenger disaster report
Also it takes a long time to qualify parts and assemblies to be used in this mission, you you keep using the older, proven stuff.
Every manufacture used to have mill spec parts available, but very few do now. I used to adapt mill-spec parts to industrial and consumer applications, but now the the consumer market forms the base of the parts used in military/ space grade parts.
The standard micro controller for the space station is a 386 based I believe. Didn't the shuttle have magnetic core memory till very recently?
Dave
Clearly the thing has gone into some safe/hibernation mode, but I would not write it of completely for a while.
Cy
------
NASA Loses All Contact
With Mars Rover
By Jill Serjeant
1-22-4
PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - NASA scientists said on Thursday they had lost contact with the robot rover Spirit on Mars and were unsure what had caused the problem.
Spirit project manager Pete Theisinger told a news briefing that there was a "very serious anomaly" in communications with the six-wheeled craft, which landed on Mars on Jan. 3 on a planned three-month mission to explore the geologic history of the planet.
Theisinger said scientists had been unable to communicate with Spirit for about 24 hours and had so far been unable to explain the source of the problem.
"There is not one single fault that explains this," Theisinger said, adding that mission scientists had worked throughout the night on scenarios ranging from a major power failure to a software or memory corruption.
Mission managers said Spirit was not completely dead, and had sent out a communication beep and default signals. But they said several attempts since Wednesday afternoon to send commands to the rover and to receive data from it via the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter and the Mars Odyssey orbiter had failed.
The grim news dampened the elated atmosphere at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where mission controllers have delighted up until now at the virtually flawless landing on Mars.
Spirit last week began its first tentative journeys sampling the surface soil of the Gusev Crater -- a barren, wind-swept basin that scientists believe may have been the site of an ancient lake bed once fed by a Martian river.
The first hitch in the mission came on Wednesday when a thunderstorm in Canberra, Australia, prevented mission controllers from transmitting command sequences from the Canberra large dish antenna complex to Spirit on its 18th day on the red planet.
Project managers initially seemed unconcerned at the setback but are now examining whether the communications glitch may have contributed to the more serious problems with Spirit.
Mission managers said on Thursday that the Spirit communications problems would have no effect on the scheduled arrival on Saturday on the opposite side of Mars of Spirit's twin exploration rover, Opportunity.
The two robotic rovers are the most advanced missions to date in man's 40-year quest to discover the geologic history of Mars and whether it was ever sufficiently warm or wet enough to sustain a recognizable form of life.
Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
I will say those are really neat pictures tho.
Later,
Tim
This reminds me of Dear Mother telling me to eat all the food on my plate because people were starving in China.
I couldn't figure out the exact cause-and-effect relationship then, and I still can't.
Dan
It's out there on his website, and I have it downloaded and saved, but I can't give it too ya, you gotta buy the service. Listen to him every morning though just to brighten the day.
From somewhere near Parkville, Mo.
William Crane
AMA 6733
http://66.111.96.172/sightings/qtvr/spirithalf.mov
It's a megabyte and a half download.
For those of you who don't have Quicktime, here's the free download page:
Cy.