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...This raises questions about that other article that claimed everything had to be specially hardened to withstand radiation, no? I had always assumed that was the case and the article text was obvious, but if we can launch off the shelf Android devices into space with no problems then why are the other NASA projects utilizing such out of date hardware?
As soon as you cross the Van Allen belt you're exposed to the full blast of the solar wind, and standard electronics start failing. You can reach orbit without crossing this belt, so my understanding is that in low Earth orbit you're still shielded enough from the solar wind for it to not be a deal-breaker. Assuming that you're referring to the stories about the Mars rover, Mars isn't geologically active enough to ha…
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Yes, and I am currently working on GAGA-2: http://blog.jgc.org/2012/01/gaga-2.html , http://blog.jgc.org/2012/01/gaga-2-distance-rtty-test.html , http://blog.jgc.org/2012/01/gaga-2-mounting-flight-computer.... The vague plan is that GAGA-2 will be all about lots of cameras pointing in all directions. GAGA-3 will be about precision landing probably using a guided parafoil. None of this is about orbit. Orbit == high ve…
Don't sell yourself and other high-altitude-ballooners short—40km is almost halfway to space and is an amazing achievement. Remember, everyone, space isn't that far away—if they put in a highway, you could drive there in about an hour. It's easy to think about space being very far away from us and untouchable, but it's actually quite close and just out of our reach. Keep reaching, fellow humans.
He's just being accurate. 'Ballooon reaches spaaaace!!1' articles upset H-A-B-ers more than most.
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Yes, and I am currently working on GAGA-2: http://blog.jgc.org/2012/01/gaga-2.html , http://blog.jgc.org/2012/01/gaga-2-distance-rtty-test.html , http://blog.jgc.org/2012/01/gaga-2-mounting-flight-computer.... The vague plan is that GAGA-2 will be all about lots of cameras pointing in all directions. GAGA-3 will be about precision landing probably using a guided parafoil. None of this is about orbit. Orbit == high ve…
Don't sell yourself and other high-altitude-ballooners short—40km is almost halfway to space and is an amazing achievement. Remember, everyone, space isn't that far away—if they put in a highway, you could drive there in about an hour. It's easy to think about space being very far away from us and untouchable, but it's actually quite close and just out of our reach. Keep reaching, fellow humans.
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With all respect, this isn't the kind of comment I've come to expect from HN lot on a serious article like this. It belongs to Verge/TechCrunch/Engadget/Gizmodo, or the the articles about the court ruling (those from yesterday).
Actually the comment had a purpose and was trying to raise awareness. The fact that it made you angry perhaps shows that it worked? Perhaps it might make you reconsider your opinions about your favorite company.
It wasn't the OP's intent, I'm sure. All of us get angry some time and mix things up and comment on unrelated articles. I've posted more unrelated/stupid comments that I care to count.
And by the way, I'm not remotely angry. I have a lot of arguments about the subjects and have argued with many about it (not passionately, but all of us were reasonable and not typical fanboys). But I don't want to see them reiterated over all HN stories, that's all.
I worked on this project for a few months. We ran everything like a typical agile startup with weekly iterations and a lot of testing "MVPs". Really cool project. Also its all going to be opensourced! http://open.nasa.gov/plan/phonesat/
What was your radiation testing like? My understanding is that there's a lot of skepticism that this thing will run for very long. NASA uses hardened processors to make sure radiation from outside the atmosphere doesn't affect electronics and using an off-the-shelf SoC built on a tight whatever nm processes has never been done before for fears of early mortality. The only exception I can think of is laptops on the IS…
To be safe, I imagine they gave the phone a tinfoil hat.
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I know this is sort of a joke, but the Nexus S shipped with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and it's been updated to Android 4.1 Jellybean as of July 20th.
Is the update for the Nexus S OTA? I haven't gotten mine yet. In fact, I haven't gotten the 4.0 (ICS) OTA yet. I heard they released a version but pulled it... I have yet to see anything beyond 2.3 for my Nexus S.