SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is sending a supercomputer to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's next resupply mission for NASA, which is currently set to launch Monday.
Officially named the "Spaceborne Computer," the Linux-based supercomputer is designed to serve in a one year experiment conducted by NASA and HPE to find out if high performance computing hardware, with no hardware customization or modification, can survive and operate in outer space conditions for a full year – the length of time, not coincidentally, it'll likely take for a crewed spacecraft to make the trip to Mars.
Typically, computers used on the ISS have to be "hardened," explained Dr. Mark Fernandez, who led the effort on the HPE side as lead payload engineer. This process involves extensive hardware modifications made to the high-performance computing (HPC) device, which incur a lot of additional cost, time and effort. One unfortunate result of the need for this physical ruggedization process is that HPCs used in space are often generations behind those used on Earth, and that means a lot of advanced computing tasks end up being shuttled off the ISS to Earth, with the results then round-tripped back to astronaut scientists in space.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday August 14 2017, @04:39AM (8 children)
You don't die from "computer fires" because there's a shit ton of regulation governing everything from the power supplies to the materials used in the boards and chips that were written with gravity and the ability to crack open a window and leave the office when there's a fire in mind. Non of those apply to space. That's where the "ruggedization" came into place: NASA engineers sat down, assessed the risks, and wrote rules to prevent everything from power supply caps sparking the rich atmosphere to EM leaking and interfering with on-board equipment. And HP calling it an "experiment" to just ignore all that and "see what happens" is no more science than holding a book in front of you and letting someone shoot you to demonstrate an internet rumor without any previous trials.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 14 2017, @05:57AM (4 children)
Maybe they have encountered "HP" Carly Fiorina? ;)
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday August 14 2017, @07:06AM (3 children)
Nah it's a more fundamental problem than a specific pay-off: NASA used to be able to fund their activities thanks to launching communication satellites into orbits. However, between the Russians, Europeans, SpaceX and the Indians, along with the budget cuts... Well, lets just say that "safety first" only applies when you can stay afloat.
Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess...
compiling...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 14 2017, @08:35AM (1 child)
Budget cuts = Trump..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @09:11AM
Budget cuts = Trump = Desperate times = desperate measures = Trump... AGHAGHAGHAGHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 14 2017, @11:51AM
No, that was never, ever true. First, when they did try that with the really terrible idea of a Space Shuttle monopoly on launching US things into space (roughly from 1975-1984), the end result was almost nothing commercial got launched due to the high launch costs of the Shuttle and the fact that it didn't offer launches for most of that period. Second, any revenue gained from such activities goes into the US's general fund to be disposed of by US Congress as it sees fit. The real advantage from NASA's point of view was that they could increase launch rate and generate more activity of the Shuttle for the same cost (launch rate being a huge factor in how expensive the launch vehicle is per launch). Finally, NASA has never had a launch vehicle reliable enough that paying customers could depend on it. That's why they gave up on commercial launch back in the late 80s and the US military gave up on the Shuttle for the most part by 1990.
I notice you include "SpaceX" in there even though NASA's last commercial or DOD missions ended about ten years prior to the creation of the business in 2002. SpaceX was completely irrelevant to the end of NASA's commercial launch activities. And really the whole observation is irrelevant. NASA gets a huge pile of money and does crap with it.
"Safety first"? There's a simple solution here. Don't have people in space, if you really care about safety first. But if you have to have people in the dangerous environment of space, that implies by default that you have a higher priority than safety. Figure out what that priority is.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 14 2017, @11:31AM (2 children)
It's not a "rich atmosphere". They're not in an Apollo 1 situation.
So what? NASA is notorious for playing it way too safe, until those assessments interfere with the political forces driving NASA, and then they get ignored. That's why they've never had a back up structure for the Vehicle Assembly Building, built more Space Shuttles, or stopped the Constellation/SLS crap.
But let's suppose your concerns were even remotely close to being a real problem. Wouldn't that "rich atmosphere" be a solid indication that NASA engineers aren't assessing risks properly? After all, shit happens. Bad capacitors aren't the only possible thing in the world that can spark. Human hair can do it with rubber, for example, and you would have the fuel-air combination right there as well. If NASA is going to risk everything by having humans aboard, then might as well do something useful while they're at it.
Well, it is an experiment. The environment has the potential to cause failures in weird ways. Further, there's the obvious question of what does it take to keep a piece of normal Earth gear running in space? Just because we have NASA engineers doesn't mean that we'll never find ourselves in a situation where non-approved gear has to be put on a spacecraft because there is no alternative choice.
And what exactly is at risk here? It's just the ISS, a two billion dollar money sink. If we're really concerned about astronaut lives or something, we could just splash the ISS and use that money stream to build a safer space station. I'm not feeling the need for huge concern here.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 14 2017, @04:38PM (1 child)
> It's just the ISS, a two billion dollar money sink. If we're really concerned about astronaut lives or something, we could just splash the ISS and use that money stream to build a safer space station.
Like cars, maintaining the one you have is a lot cheaper than getting a new one.
Actually worse than cars, because driving a new one off the lot isn't typically a live fireworks-and-politicians event, and if you're dumping big money into a custom, they improve in value.
I'm pretty sure that HPE didn't just grab a random rack off the Chinese assembly line and just changed to metric screws for the space station. How much advertising are they expecting to pound us with is they run flawlessly? Can't have this HPE-branded thing be all over international news because it blew up in the ISS...
Back on topic: Isn't the ISS protected from most of the radiation that would affect the computers on a trip to Mars?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 15 2017, @01:49AM
Unless, like cars, that isn't true, like maintaining a Lamborghini for a commute to work when really what you need is an econobox. A couple of years of what is spent on the ISS could be used to buy a pretty nice space station that actually does most of what the ISS does with far lower maintenance costs.
Why would that happen? The atmosphere on the station isn't a tinder box. That's one mistake those NASA engineers aren't going to repeat.
Most, but not all. They'll still see radiation effects (both solar and cosmic rays) on their equipment.