You cant throw an amd x2 into a pentium 133, and you cant just throw a newer chip into the space shuttle…Īnd for those of you who dont understand the Y2K problem, the problem is that to save space (back when computer memory was measured in bytes… maybe KB) the year was stored as a two bit number, instead of 4, as that made sense in the day, no one thought 30 years in the future when 99 became 00. The shuttle, similar to say, a pentium 133, cannot ‘just be upgraded with the newest hardware… even i can think of that” really dont understand the situation. Reply View in chronologyĪny of you who say “upgrade it, jeeze. If I had to guess, the new (ugly, POS) rocket they are coming up with will use something a little more robust.
#NEW NASA SPACE SHUTTLE UPGRADE#
Rather than spend the millions of dollars it would take to figure out what they could upgrade it to, they have opted to stick with what they know works. There is really no energy sheilding on the shuttle, to do that would make it too heavy. If it powers up enough trasistors, or shuts them off, it could mean disaster. The truth is that NASA has no idea what might happen to the onboard computers if a solar bust or another “Spave thing” (my term) came through. A pentium chip uses less energy per transistor than does the 8086. It now takes less energy to switch a tranistor from off to on than it used to. The reason, for the most part, as to why it has not been upgraded, has nothing to do with know how, but more to do with unknowns.Īs the technology has gotten better newer and faster, it has also gotten smaller. (this was when the 80486dx was just about to be released) Many of us wondered why. I remember in high school, lo these many years ago, hering that the shuttle uses the 8086. Collapse replies (1) Reply View in chronology Given that and my own experience of such systems I would strongly stand by two statements,ġ) the existence of the bug is 1% technical and 99% human negligence/ economic shortcuts.Ģ) Resolving it is trivial (given the available resources and expertise) and it should have been quietly fixed instead of becoming a “political” story to embarrass NASA.ĭmitriy, it’s irrelevant who made the mistake, the mistake was made. JFYI, to my knowledge the General Dynamics Tomahawk (cruise missiles) that carry nuclear payloads also suffer the legacy limitations of the Motorola 68000 hardware, but you don’t hear many people spreading fear stories about those mixing up their timezones on Jan 1st and taking out New York instead of Iran. It’s most likely a hardware problem involving width limitations of 16 bit floating point numbers. net are not even in the same ballpark of computer science.
#NEW NASA SPACE SHUTTLE CODE#
Military and aviation code is invariably specified in Z, written in ADA and passed through numerous program proving tools. Quality software, of the kind you would expect to find in a space shuttle, takes this into account from day zero.
#NEW NASA SPACE SHUTTLE SOFTWARE#
That is the point of the software lifecycle model which you can understand by reading Sommerville. It’s important to understand that ALL systems are destined to become “legacy”. It just wouldn’t be flying in the normal certified mode that we are used to flying.” If I were one of the astronauts, hearing “I am sure we would figure out a way…” can’t be the most comforting of thoughts.Ībout the time the first space shuttle was launched I was building my own computers from 6800 microprocessors and writing my own operating systems for them in assembly 😉 They’re not all that worried, but a statement like the following hardly seems confident: “if we have an ‘Oh my god,’ and we have to be up there, I am sure we would figure out a way to operate the vehicle safely…. Still, you would think they’d be able to, you know, test that sort of thing out - but NASA says they simply have no idea what would happen, and they’d like to avoid finding out. The folks at NASA have worked hard to make sure that a space shuttle is never in space from December 31st to January 1st of any year, for fear that its computers would go haywire in a Y2K manner - perhaps causing serious damage to the ability of the shuttle to continue its mission. So, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to then find out that NASA isn’t at all comfortable that the shuttle’s computers can survive New Year’s in space. In fact, at times, NASA has turned to the likes of eBay to pick up old pieces like 8086 chips to replace original parts on the shuttle. In fact, even NASA admits that it’s the equivalent of an old pickup truck.
It’s no secret that the space shuttle is now based on very old technology.
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