International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
1–10 of 16 posts
Re: International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
#2So fun to read. In my early career I used to think that replacing memory in servers used for production was risky. What if I could not get it done in time? Chaos!
Later I worked in a refinery when replacing mission critical items could seriously mean injury or death if mishandled. What if I made a mistake? Chaos!
Now, I realize what I was doing was child's play!
Re: International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
#3So fun to read. In my early career I used to think that replacing memory in servers used for production was risky. What if I could not get it done in time? Chaos! Later I worked in a refinery when replacing mission critical items could seriously mean injury or death if mishandled. What if I made a mistake? Chaos! Now, I realize what I was doing was child's play!
Do it wrong and the life support systems for you and your friends up there go out and you all die. Also, this entire $150,000,000,000 international investment may lose guidance and altitude control and burn up in the atmosphere, or maybe even rain down debris on some unlucky city.
No pressure!
Re: International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
#4So fun to read. In my early career I used to think that replacing memory in servers used for production was risky. What if I could not get it done in time? Chaos! Later I worked in a refinery when replacing mission critical items could seriously mean injury or death if mishandled. What if I made a mistake? Chaos! Now, I realize what I was doing was child's play!
Do it wrong and the life support systems for you and your friends up there go out and you all die. Also, this entire $150,000,000,000 international investment may lose guidance and altitude control and burn up in the atmosphere, or maybe even rain down debris on some unlucky city. No pressure!
Iirc, mission critical aerospace computers have triple redundancy since like ... forever.
So I can't believe the ISS computer doesn't have some sort of redundancy in place to prevent a catastrophe when there's so much money and lives at stake.
But I liked your joke.
Re: International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do it wrong and the life support systems for you and your friends up there go out and you all die. Also, this entire $150,000,000,000 international investment may lose guidance and altitude control and burn up in the atmosphere, or maybe even rain down debris on some unlucky city. No pressure!
Iirc, mission critical aerospace computers have triple redundancy since like ... forever. So I can't believe the ISS computer doesn't have some sort of redundancy in place to prevent a catastrophe when there's so much money and lives at stake. But I liked your joke.
Did you read the article? If you did you'd know that they run two computers. If one fail, a third automatically activates and the faulty is disabled. They also keep a fourth to swap out the failed one.
But it still doesn't change the fact that swapping out with a completely new specification can have unintended consequences. They waited until a computer failed to swap, so if it did not work, they'd run at reduced redundancy.
Re: International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
#6I wonder what kind of hardware and software (CPU and OS) we’re talking about here.
Re: International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iirc, mission critical aerospace computers have triple redundancy since like ... forever. So I can't believe the ISS computer doesn't have some sort of redundancy in place to prevent a catastrophe when there's so much money and lives at stake. But I liked your joke.
Did you read the article? If you did you'd know that they run two computers. If one fail, a third automatically activates and the faulty is disabled. They also keep a fourth to swap out the failed one. But it still doesn't change the fact that swapping out with a completely new specification can have unintended consequences. They waited until a computer failed to swap, so if it did not work, they'd run at reduced red…
Did you read the article?
From the HN guidelines:
Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Re: International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do it wrong and the life support systems for you and your friends up there go out and you all die. Also, this entire $150,000,000,000 international investment may lose guidance and altitude control and burn up in the atmosphere, or maybe even rain down debris on some unlucky city. No pressure!
Iirc, mission critical aerospace computers have triple redundancy since like ... forever. So I can't believe the ISS computer doesn't have some sort of redundancy in place to prevent a catastrophe when there's so much money and lives at stake. But I liked your joke.
Yeah the point of this article is to say that they had no spare parts anymore since the machine is 20 years old.
Someone got an idea that they could manufacture the old missing parts (using new manufacturing process) and now they did and it works.
Re: International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
#9I wonder what kind of hardware and software (CPU and OS) we’re talking about here.
It's a Russian built system from the 90s, so think embedded system type interface. The hardware is probably rad-hardened 80s era chips. It has an important job, but that job doesn't necessarily require a ton of CPU cycles or oceans of memory.
Re: International Space Station computer gets a heart transplant
#10I wonder what kind of hardware and software (CPU and OS) we’re talking about here.
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