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NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

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Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#241

Post by jorvi »

gentleman11 wrote: post #202
NeutronStar wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did that comment actually bring to the conversation?

Occasionally, very occasionally, it’s nice to read somebody just expressing enthusiasm instead of just posting a clever counter argument. It’s like a spice that you only want a little of but that’s still nice

Eh, I can understand both sides of the fence. 'this is why I read HN' is nothing but a slightly more verbal '+1', but as you stated it does humanize HN and makes it feel more social.

In terms of downvotes, what really irks me and what I often see is people posting factually correct information, but still being sent into faded oblivion because some sect of the community's worldview doesn't agree with the facts.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#242

Post by bluGill »

lamontcg wrote: post #178
desktopninja wrote: post #62

I wonder if NASA would welcome a live worldwide collaboration to try solve this problem.

The probably 5 people in the world who are domain experts in the Hubble's control system don't really need a hundred backseat drivers, that won't help any. And as someone who has been invited into "war rooms" by managers who do the "you're smart so of course you can help these other smart people stuck on a hard problem" there's a real skill to being able to read the room and know when to back the fuck out of it or ju…

Give me 5-10 years at NASA working on Hubble and I can be a domain expert useful in the room. Until then I'm a C++ expert who needs to keep his mouth shut unless asked a difficult C++ question (I wouldn't be surprised if Hubble is written in Ada and they can't possibly have a difficult C++ question).

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#243

Post by bumby »

falcrist wrote: post #225
qzw wrote: post #7

pushes up glasses I would watch the heck out of a Twitch stream of their debugging/brainstorming sessions. I always loved the movie Apollo 13 , especially the technical troubleshooting parts.

It's worth noting that the people in that movie were WAY more loud and emotional than the real NASA engineers and operators. You can see how NASA people react to tough situations by watching the videos of mission control during the Challenger and Columbia disasters. No shouting. No arguments. Just cool professionalism and restrained emotions. They have a job to do, and they do it well even under stress. "Steely-eyed…

>the people in that movie were WAY more loud and emotional than the real NASA engineers and operators.

There are plenty of NASA engineers and leaders who lose their cool. I’m only saying that so people don’t overly lionize them in a way that prevents them from pursuing a similar job because they feel they are somehow cut from a different cloth.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#244

Post by zomglings »

amelius wrote: post #172
meepmorp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but "Debugging on a computer that is down... in space," does sound more interesting, right? You have a computer that you can only interact with over a radio link, and need to make it start working again with only what you know about how the system is built and a limited set of remote commands. Sounds like something I'd get obsessed with solving.

There is a game in here, somewhere, somehow.

Paging Zachtronics (https://www.zachtronics.com/).

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#245

Post by bluGill »

yupper32 wrote: post #163
datalus wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does this also mean that the ISS is no longer able to get serviced, or are there projects to work on in-orbit service vehicles?

ISS has airlocks that allow you to leave without removing all the air from the rest of the ship. Vehicles like a Dragon can attach their port to ISS, board, and then perform a space walk through the ISS's airlock. Hubble is different. It's not like it's a ship that you can board. So you need two things: Ability to attach yourself to Hubble, and ability to leave Dragon to perform a spacewalk. It's not clear whether yo…

These problems could be solved. However no current space craft is designed the right way. Maybe it is a trivial modification to Dragon (making it bigger...), maybe it is better to start from scratch. That is a question for domain experts who probably haven't given the idea enough consideration to give a good answer.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#246

Post by ben0x539 »

jorvi wrote: post #241
gentleman11 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occasionally, very occasionally, it’s nice to read somebody just expressing enthusiasm instead of just posting a clever counter argument. It’s like a spice that you only want a little of but that’s still nice

Eh, I can understand both sides of the fence. 'this is why I read HN' is nothing but a slightly more verbal '+1', but as you stated it does humanize HN and makes it feel more social. In terms of downvotes, what really irks me and what I often see is people posting factually correct information, but still being sent into faded oblivion because some sect of the community's worldview doesn't agree with the facts.

I don't understand this viewpoint. Information being factually correct is a low bar. I have a lot of factually correct information that is irrelevant or misleading, or that I could state in a way that drags down the level of discourse more than it illuminates truth. Factually correct information is usually involved in tu quoque fallacies, or used to goad people into drawing false, non-sequitur conclusions. The Hacker News guidelines lay out a list of expectations for comments that go beyond factual correctness.

If someone uses factually correct information to make a comment thread worse, I can see how downvotes could be justified.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#247

Post by belter »

belter wrote: post #233

They have two computers: - First they had a DF-224 flight computer and a - Science Instrument Control and Data Handling (SI C&DH) Initially DF-224 between missions got installed a coprocessor: https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/archive/hubble/a_pdf/news/facts/Co... During another servicing mission they replaced it with something called the Advanced Computer with Intel 80486: https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/archive/hubble/a_pdf/news…

There is also a Help Desk but its probably busy right now...

"Welcome to the Hubble Space Telescope Help Desk"

https://stsci.service-now.com/hst?id=hst_index

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#248

Post by bluGill »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #76
tomrod wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a truly stellar wit. But in all honesty, how would an internet across the solar system work?

> how would an internet across the solar system work? Realistically, each ~150 ms sphere would have its own cloud infrastructure. Those systems would then bridge with one another. So idk AWS on Earth and DogeNet on Mars. I would love for a distributed model as much as the next guy, but it's unlikely to happen for the same reasons that it isn't happening today.

More than 150ms. There are currently satellite internet services that you can get that use geosynchronous orbits outside of that 150ms zone.

The idea is sound, but the zone needs to be a bit bigger in reality. I think the moon is close enough to earth to be in the same zone (assuming antennas on "both sides", and special routing protocols to deal with day/night cycles)

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#250

Post by jccooper »

rtkwe wrote: post #189
datalus wrote: post #57

How specific is the Hubble that you can only repair it with the Space Shuttle? o_O

All the operating human launch systems are just capsules meant to either free fly or dock at a station, they don't have airlocks to let people out so using them for a Hubble repair would require a lot of modification and danger to use the whole capsule as an airlock. [0] [0] Except Soyuz I guess their orbital module would allow you to keep the descent module pressurized but it's still way outside the design so there'…

Soyuz has been used for spacewalks before, and the cabin is tolerant of vacuum. They haven't done that in ages, so it's possible that's been optimized out, but I'd suspect that requirement's been respected over the years.
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