Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 13:18:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Essenz Consulting <john@essenz.com> To: Brian Handy <handy@lambic.physics.montana.edu> Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Hardware in space? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10006211313410.50107-100000@athena.lightningone.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006210103060.33677-100000@lambic.physics.montana.edu>
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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
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