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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: 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.