Comments on: Self-Healing Computers for Damaged Spaceships

By: Chuck Lam

Chuck Lam — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:20:19 +0000

To alphonso richardson, Nope! You're not missing anything.

By: alphonso richardson

alphonso richardson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:12:29 +0000

So this is a bit like chip-scale LANs/WANs, as opposed to redundant circuits, or I'm I missing some really obvious concept?

By: someguy

someguy — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:33:45 +0000

HAL: "Just a moment. Just a moment. I've just picked up a fault in the AE-35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours."

DAVE: "…."

HAL: "Nvm i fixed it."

By: Timber

Timber — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:57:22 +0000

Good answer Aidan

By: Aidan

Aidan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:42:51 +0000

Timber

You asked "Who is it at the end of the satellite and what is it he is actually doing?"
It looks like he's holding an over sized steering wheel, I suppose he's driving the satellite.

By: ioresult

ioresult — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:45:05 +0000

They never changed the mirror inside Hubble. They added corrective optics.

By: Chuck Lam

Chuck Lam — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:58:53 +0000

What happened to parallel redundancy? Chips, software and simple hardware drives are cheap and reliable. Redundancy works. Let's keep things simple. Simple equals reliability. Let's sacrifice a few extra pounds of payload for reliability. Opps! I forgot for a moment, NASA is working on this "Scalable Self-Configurable Architecture for Reusable Space Systems." project. Whew, what a mouth full! Oh well! At least we see where some of our tax dollars are wasted, err . . . invested.

By: RL

RL — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:47:06 +0000

This kind of research is exactly why space exploration funding is benficial not only for the direct science involved but spinoffs that can be applied elsewhere. Self-healing electronics could have a huge number of applications to all sorts of products.

And I can't help but think to myself, that should this work be successful (it sounds incredibly complex to make practical but I think it will be done), that Mr Akoglu will have put "the ghost in the machine".

By: cheech

cheech — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:22:03 +0000

why cant they just make a engineer robot with spare equipment? and a spare robot incase he breaks down

By: Astrofiend (Syd, Aust)

Astrofiend (Syd, Aust) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:14:16 +0000

Vanamonde Says:
April 27th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

"USA 193 was destroyed but not "shot down". Pieces re-entered but piece are still orbiting. You cannot de-orbit with a kinetic energy missile – you can only create a cloud of little pieces, each on their own path. "

I think the orbit of USA 193 was low enough so that atmospheric drag (though the atmosphere is tenuous at that altitude) is supposed to make the orbits of the small pieces decay in a fairly short time frame. I heard somewhere that it would be a matter of weeks until reentry for the vast majority of the debris, but I may be wrong…

I know other satellites have been blown to pieces by the likes of China in high-altitude orbits though; the orbits of which certainly won't decay for quite some time.

By: Astrofiend (Syd, Aust)

Astrofiend (Syd, Aust) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:05:40 +0000

This is part of the reason I'm so excited about missions that will be heading out in the next 10-20 years. The greatly enhanced reliability at the circuit-level that this kind of redundancy will yield will be a great boon for future missions, possibly allowing for very robust spacecraft that could operate in more extreme environments for longer periods of time.

But it's research of the sort that the SCARS group are working on that is really exciting stuff. One can imagine scalable swarms of semi-autonomous rovers/vehicles/devices that could communicate with each other and with Earth to really go out and get the scientific observations done at a cracking pace. You could have a large number of specialized vehicles with very specific abilities working at the same time around the clock. With the ability to communicate status and objectives between themselves, mission planners could prioritize observations and objectives and let their little minions go out and get busy.

The Earth sciences benefit from such systems too – I believe the concept has already been worked up for swarms of small underwater autonomous vehicles that can go out and plumb the depths of the oceans by themselves, uplink their observations on a regular basis, and communicate in a limited but coordinated manner with each other.

Of course, some of these abilities are certainly a while off, but they are intriguing none-the-less. The possibilities for future development of such technology are a little exciting and a bit scary at the same time

By: Vanamonde

Vanamonde — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 05:22:13 +0000

USA 193 was destroyed but not "shot down". Pieces re-entered but piece are still orbiting. You cannot de-orbit with a kinetic energy missile – you can only create a cloud of little pieces, each on their own path. But the solid hydrazine (supposely, the reason for this exercise) was evaporated.

By: Timber

Timber — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:48:57 +0000

Ian,

That is an extraordinary photo, I have not seen that before. Who is it at the end of the satellite and what is it he is actually doing? Is he using his thrusters to manuver the unit to Discovery? That had to have been a lonnnggg untethered manuver, his heartrate must have been off the chart