From owner-freebsd-hardware Wed Jun 21 10: 1:29 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from athena.lightningone.net (athena.lightningone.net [12.34.104.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A343337BED6 for ; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 10:01:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from john@essenz.com) Received: from localhost (john@localhost) by athena.lightningone.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA50146; Wed, 21 Jun 2000 13:18:18 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from john@essenz.com) X-Authentication-Warning: athena.lightningone.net: john owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 13:18:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Essenz Consulting X-Sender: john@athena.lightningone.net To: Brian Handy Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Hardware in space? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Brain, For a hard drive, you can look at solid state FLASH disks. They make FLASH IDE "Hard Drives" which connect to a motherboards IDE channel. Drive is not a drive but FLASH memory. However, I still am not sure if that would be okay up in space. Also, I imagine temperatures will be very low, like 50 below ZERO. That may also cause a problem. Doesnt sound like something you will be able to do with of the shelf equipment. -jve On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, Brian Handy wrote: > Hi all, > > I've got some ideas that I could use some advise on. Right now, I'm > working on a Science, Research & Technology (SR&T) proposal that I'm going > to be submitting to NASA with a group of folks here from Montana > State. We're going to propose to launch a solar telescope on what amounts > to a missile body and look at the sun for 5 minutes or so. (The total > launch is about 10 minutes long, but we're only high enough in the > atmosphere for 5 minutes or so.) > > To get an idea of the sort of images we can make doing this, here's a > sample URL: > > http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000621.html > > Anyway, in the past these payloads have always included simple (but > painful) electronics packages that were basically home-brewed by the > engineering teams that put them together. I'm thinking that, what with > the capabilities now available in a simple laptop motherboard I should be > able to drive the whole payload with a laptop. Question is, what should > I use? (My tentative OS plan, and my tenuous link to -hardware, is > FreeBSD. :-) > > So, food for thought: the hardware has to be vacuum compatible, so no > electrolytic caps and probably no disk drives. (Unless I package the > drives in some sort of pressure vessel.) The box will have to be able to > talk to three CCD cameras, which I suspect will be talking over an RS-232 > link. It will also have to talk to the rocket electronics, and a GPS card > would be a nice addition. (I know people who have launched their payloads > from White Sands Missile Range, only never to see them again. :-) We will > download some small part of the imagery collected during the flight, the > housekeepking telemetry (temperatures and such) and the position as > indicated by the GPS. > > I can easily enough make myself a scaled-down version of FreeBSD that has > none of the extra dreck you'd expect with a full-blown distribution; > PicoBSD has already solved many of those problems. I'm a little concerned > about saving the data -- I won't have enough telemetry during the flight > to download all the data (all told, around 500 MBytes). So that will need > to be stored somehow; some sort of non-volatile memory would be nice. > Once it hits the ground, I have this idea that I'd plug my laptop via > ethernet cable into the butt-end of the payload (while sitting in the > sand, somewhere in the middle of WSMR) and download everything to disk. > > It's clearly a bit of a hostile environment, but it seems like this should > all be solved stuff. I don't have to have flight qualified electronics on > a sounding rocket, but the stuff should be able to function without > benefit of air flowing around it -- special heat sinks would probably be > in order. Also curious what non-volatile memory is in this context. > > Any suggestions? Vendors? Experts? > > Cheers, > > Brian > -- > Brian Handy Mail: handy@physics.montana.edu > Department of Physics Phone: (406) 994-6317 > Montana State University Fax: (406) 994-4452 > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message