Macs In Space II 161
MasterOfDisaster writes: "Some nut is planning to make a global wireless network using apple's Power Macintosh G4 Cubes. Here's the story." We ran a story about this guy last year, but this one has a bit more detail and he's progressed further in his plans.
Imagine (Score:1)
Sounds like well-planned marketing scam... (Score:2)
Mac has fallen from the sky (look at the stock price) and now we the executives have dreamed up a funky story and found a geek to talk about it.
And the expected response is?
(after reading this article)
"Sorry honey, change of plans
But hey
Re:Mac OS9? Running a satelite? Hope it's osX (Score:1)
since when is the OS "responsible" for that. its good to have protected memory, but OSes rarely crash on their own. if the application is coded correctly, the box won't crash. its ultimately the applciations responsibility in not crashing.
Re:What about temp changes in space (Score:1)
What about Cooling? #17
Re:Windows too Crash Prone? What about the Mac? (Score:1)
why would it crash when it runs out of memory
Re:The cost, (Score:1)
"Apple Computer has agreed to provide hardware and technical support to SkyCorp for this venture."
So other than modifcation costs, hardware costs are not a factor. Also...
However, the primary purpose of the satellite mission is not to place a Web server in orbit but to test SkyCorp's satellite assembly technology. The company is developing technologies to assemble satellites in orbit that would be as fully-functional as existing satellites, but at a small fraction of the mass and cost.
Wingo believes it would be possible to build a satellite constellation of the type proposed by satellite communications firm Teledesic for less than 10 percent of Teledesic's cost, which has been estimated to be at least $9 billion.
Sound to me like the guys's sticking to technology he knows and attempting to bring down the costs of launching and maintaining a large-scale satellite communications network. I wish him success. Also, I wonder if he could get a few bucks from Apple for the It would be a great ad gimmick.
Forseen problems, and a little "junk" (Score:1)
On a serious note:
It will be interesting to see how these webservers are going to handle connections from earth and to see what type of bandwidth they can handle, collectively.
One problem I see is that the satellites, er, MACs, I assume, are going to be put into LEO (Low Earth Orbit) to maximize the data throughput. The disadvantage of LEO is that one satellite will only have about a 10-15 minute (sometimes less) "talk-time" to a single spot on earth, since they are not geostationary.
Seeing how there will be such short time for one to communicate to a single satellite, they will have to devise a scheme to pass a user onto the next visible satellite when the one they're on goes over the horizon. This may prove to be the simple part!
For those of us who run multi-server web sites, we know the problem with passing a user from one server to the next and maintaining "persistance". By persistance I mean applications that need to be started and finished on the same webserver -- shopping carts, credit card authorizations, etc, etc. If they plan to offer high-end web services such as these on the satellites, they will have to come up with a pretty sophisticated load-balancing scheme that will allow them to keep persistant connections persistant.
Cheers,
Dan
Publicity stunt (Score:1)
I mean, really; this could be kind of near as a proof-of-concept thing, but this guy's career will be pretty much over if it doesn't work out. I really hope that Apple is paying him enough that he can retire comfortably....
Macellites?!?, this "Geek" has no clue what he is (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:What's that point.. (Score:1)
It'd probably weigh more than the machine...
No way (Score:1)
You suck Rob.
Re:You may be right, he may be crazy... (Score:1)
Iridium satellites and Mars probes seem to have been stupid ideas too, how much loss would this be if it chokes? :)
My only technical worry is "what about debris and radiation?"
Re:Nut (Score:1)
Upgrade to NetBSD, of course.
Property damage (Score:1)
Will his pockets be deep enough when one of these things careens into one of AT&T's satellites?
Dancin Santa
Re:Macs in space II (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Prone to crash??? (Score:1)
Re:What's that point.. (Score:2)
Not sure if this is what the "nut" was thinking of when he said it performed better, but apparently the later Intel processors (post-486) have big problems with cosmic rays - flipped bits, missed instructions, etc. This is one of the reasons why NASA relies on older machines still.
Re:About time! (Score:1)
USE LINUX PPC DAMNIT!
Mac OS9? Running a satelite? Hope it's osX (Score:2)
Geez... I think I would feel better running windows 2000, serously.
Unless they are using OSx, I can't imagine that they really believe it's any more reliable than your average 1-2 week lifespan uptime. Also, whats to protect the vital comunication systems if a single process freaks out and crashes the entire system? Wouldn't be such a big problem with any modern OS.
*sigh*
I am not sure it is that unrealistic to cover most of the United States or greater Europe w/500+ satelites at the right orbit level. (15 minutes of coverage is bullshit, depends on the altitude of the satelite and it's orbital rotation
Anyway, lots of very interesting inovations come from 'wacky people' with 'wacky ideas'
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Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
a market for cubes!? (Score:2)
so that's who's buying G4 Cubes. i was wondering which 50 people bought them, as it certainly wasn't anybody i know.
people have been wondering what the target market was for these things: do you think Apple had this in mind all along? i guess this would account for the astronomical pricing ;)
- j
Airports are x86-powered (Score:3)
Really the thing is little more then a FlashROM, an off-brand x86 and of course Lucent's Orinoco PC-Card. The code running it is exemplarily, folks have found lots of goodies in it and Apple's put out several revs. of improvements, but not a PPC to be found.
Since the article talks about flying boxes with MacOS on PowerPC's then clearly the existing AirPort base-station technology is NOT the subject. There'd be nothing in common with either the hardware or the code. It'd be easier to start with a BSD underpinning (MacOS X) or something like Sustainable Software's [sustworks.com] products (MacOS >X.)
Thus, moderators, please bring down those postings that refer to flying AirPorts.
BTW, a good (though dated) AirPort technology link is http://www.msrl.com/airport-gold [msrl.com]
Re:a market for cubes!? (Score:1)
Re:Windows too Crash Prone? What about the Mac? (Score:1)
Re:Mac Uptime "Good Enough." (Score:1)
Re:Mac Uptime "Good Enough." (Score:1)
That's absolutely true, and it's what most *nix guys mean when they say those OS's aren't stable.
Excuses don't help, an OS has no reason to go down short of hardware failure. Ever.
Re:About time! (Score:1)
Time to go refresh in metamod until I can right this injustice.
Re:a market for cubes!? (Score:1)
really the only problem with Apple's computers is the fact that Motorolla chips are holding them back. i'm sure they would've gone for IBM long ago, and would have had a plan in place to have near 1Ghz G3s if Altavec wasn't so damned impressive. if it weren't for the Motorolla problem, Apple's computer would be considerably faster and cheaper. it's no reason to go jumping to Intel as some might suggest, but it is a serious problem.
- j
Re:Nut - that would make too much sense (Score:1)
After all, they're SUPERCOMPUTERs, right?
Re:Cooling? (Score:1)
The point? (Score:1)
What exactly are the satellites going to do?
Quoth the article:
he plans to build a 544-satellite constellation to provide earthbound Web hosting and e-mail.
and
The orbiting Apples would use a modified version of the Apple Airport wireless-data device to transmit information to users here on terra firma.
It looks like the Macs aren't going to be the web/mail servers (*earthbound* hosting) - all they're going to do is manage radio signals?
Re:Government Restrictions on Unix/Windows servers (Score:1)
quiet (Score:1)
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oh so useful (Score:1)
It seems to me that someone can't let the Mac vs. PC war end.
HURRY! (Score:1)
I would like to see something good happen for Apple, after all Steve Jobs returning and the iMac did the company some justice this year, this however is like a slap in the face if you ask me. His idea will never fly... liTTerally
Firestone Tires Spoof [antioffline.com]
An apple fell on Newton. (Score:2)
extremes (Score:1)
Re:too User Friendly (Score:1)
Re:Cooling? (Score:2)
Bill - aka taniwha
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Just What We Need. (Score:1)
I really don't see what the hype is about. This seems like a poor idea and a gross waste of funds.
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seumas.com
Windows too Crash Prone? What about the Mac? (Score:2)
Ground Control, "When you move your hand over the button it should light up."
Project Reboot, "It's lit up."
Ground Control, "Hit the button when it lights up."
Joseph Elwell.
Re:Macs in space II (Score:1)
What's next, millionare vacations on the ISS? Oh, wait...
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Re:Cooling? (Score:2)
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:2)
Have you ever noticed a little hole on the top cover of your hard drive with a BO NOT COVER label next to it? That's a vent hole. Air goes in and out through it (heavily filtered, of course). It's the air that allows the heads to float a teensy-weensy distance above the platters while they're spinning (and dragging air around with them). Remember the Landing Zone parameter on old MFM hard drives? That's where the heads would go before the drive stopped spinning so that once they did stop, the heads would stop floating and slide to a halt on the surface.
Where the hell am I going with all this, you ask? Vacuum of space == no air in drive == heads can't float == hard drive doesn't work. Period. That's why satellites don't have hard drives (they also don't need them).
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Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:1)
Overclocking and Klingons (Score:1)
For some reason I can just envision a Bird of Prey equipped with a 8.6 Linux Kernel decloacking next to one of these things and making waste of it... "Space Garbage!"
Re:Good Idea? (Score:1)
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:2)
1) s/BO/DO
2) The concept of heads floating on a thin cushion of air above the platters is the cornerstone of Winchester hard disk design. This is why the surface of the heads is carefully designed with a contour that promotes the correct "ride height" or "float height" (I can't remember which term is used). IBM's technical documents state the proper float height for their drives.
If you wanted a hard-drive-like thing in a satellite, you might get away with a solid-state hard drive (rad-hardened, of course... if such a version exists at all).
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Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:1)
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:2)
Instead of trying to make a disk drive perfectly sealed, disc drive companies make the drive breath from a well filtered breather hole. This is because when drive run and heat up the air expands and wants to push air out, then get turned off and the air wants to come back in. Better to filter air in one spot then get contaminated air from misc. leak points.
Launching is still expensive. (Score:1)
He's talking about hundreds of satellites. That's a few billion USD worth of launching there.
You have to keep launching replacement satellites too. With 544 satellites and a 15 year lifespan you'll need to launch 3 satellites a month.
Unless costs go down, it'll fail for the same reasons Iridium failed. Iridium didn't really fail because they charged high. Iridium failed because it was a no-win situation.
If you charge less you'll go bust. Because your satellites won't have capacity to support enough customers to keep you operating at that price. If you charge more, you don't get enough customers.
The Iridium people thought they would have enough customers willing to pay really high prices. But they were very wrong. GSM roaming was good enough for most. Those that go where normal cellphones don't reach probably don't want to be contacted by cellphone
Convection (Score:1)
Oh yeah, (Score:1)
What you need are cheaper space vehicles, and cheaper launches.
Once it's about USD50K-100K per launch, such schemes no longer sound ridiculous.
MacOS? Yeah Right. (Score:1)
Re:hm - READING (Score:2)
Researcher Dennis Wingo says there's a cheaper, simpler way to set up a network of wireless-data satellites: Girdle the globe with Apple's Cubes
What part of that didn't you understand? And no, he didn't say he'd use OS9, but it does say Mac OS. I agree that he'll probably use Darwin (more probably the whole OSX) because if he claims that Windows crashes a lot, he doesn't use classic Mac OSs very often.
MyopicProwls
I would say some of that 150lbs is shielding? (Score:1)
G4 mac cube? Sheesh.
Anyway... This may not be as farfetched as everyone might think.
The point is... If he can get it to fly (pun intended)
They're CHEAP! With enough backups in orbit..
it should work.
Now.. as far as it actually being able to handle the traffic that he's thinking of... that
remains to be seen.. but I don't think he's going
to have as many problems as most people think he
will.
A LOT of research has been done on shielding and
materials to withstand that kind of environment.
I'm curious to watch the progress on this one
Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:5)
There are also the issues of microgravity and vacuum. Metals behave differently in orbit. Several communications satellites have failed because of the growth of zinc solenoids in the spacecraft in orbit. Plastics will outgas, changing their structure. The air trapped in the hardrive will exert a constant pressure on the seals holding it in, increasing the chance of hard drive failure. All the rules are different in space.
The temperature differential between the light and dark sides of the satellite are approx. 200 F. With all that thermal stress, all components will be mechanically stressed.
While I applaud this guys gung-ho spirit, I think he underestimates the harsh environment of space.
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Upgrades? (Score:1)
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seumas.com
Technical and business issues (Score:2)
Besides, the business model is bogus. Iridum couldn't make it doing phones, what makes him think that he can make money with data-only transmissions competing with DSL, CableModems and GSM/PCS technology?
Oh yea, then there's the latency issue since you are sending your signals further, making it unacceptable for playing games... Anyway, there's no real North American or Europe market that can support him. Maybe in more remote places lacking current infrastructure it would make sense, but can they pay the cost of all those mini-sats at 120lb a pop???
- Mike
Re:Macs in space II (Score:1)
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seumas.com
Re:linux (Score:1)
Dissenter
Re:Cooling? (Score:2)
At high altitudes (>10,000 feet), driving cars becomes hazardous, because there isn't enough air to adequately cool normal brakes. This, coupled with steep downhills. . .
Overclockers Paradise (Score:1)
Cool Beans! Well at least the Geeks in Space will have something to play with... too bad arent any games written for it :-P
Re:Mac Uptime "Good Enough." (Score:2)
The trick is to get it watertight out of the box. OpenBSD's probably the closest, but starts to wander away from the mark when you add functionality. There's a quicker return on investment with with Mac servers if you're security conscious. You know how much a Unux security guru costs?
<em>And sure you can run a Mac with no software and no extensions, but you can't do anything with it. </em>
In my extensions folder, there are 206 items. (Most of them shared libraries Lotus Notes barfed all over my system.) Do I need an audio CD driver on a server? No. Do I need ColorPicker or ColorSync on a server? No. Do I need MacInTalk? No. Do I need finderpop? No. Ditto for control strips, control panels, any font that didn't come with the OS, etc. Five minutes worth of work gets you one stable Mac server.
What makes the Mac unstable has nothing to do with the OS and eveything to do with the applications it runs. Protected memory systems (like Unix) are more forgiving of buggy code...if the Gimp dies a horrible death, it won't take the kernal with it. On the other hand, the Mac will reboot if the program/thread isn't coded to exit gracefully on error.
This means the Mac is only as stable as its applications. This is a problem when you are running enormous and complex applications, like popular web browsers, office productivity suites, or desktop publishing programs.
Running small RealBasic apps and garden variety networking software tied together with a few Applescripts will likely keep running forever without a reboot.
OTOH, cruising slashdot with Netscape while photoshopping Steve Jobs sodomizing Tux while "working" on sales pitch in Microsoft Word will probably have you cursing up a storm and rebooting once every couple days. (If you used iCab and Nisus and Canvas instead of NS and Word and Photoshop, you'd probably think those singing the "Macs are unstable" chorus are a bunch of idiots who don't know what they're talking about.)
So, ironically, where the Mac is supposed to shine the brightest, as a desktop workstation, it is at it's least stable. As a server, it does all right. Better than NT/2000, at any rate, and probably as good as the BSDs. (My personal favorite younickses. Got an OpenBSD box running an intensive PHP-heavy site on an antiquated Sun workstation. I'm impressed with how well it holds up.)
SoupIsGood Food
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:1)
Re:hm - READING (Score:1)
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:1)
Oh, come on. There are plenty of small-footprint x86 solutions out there. PC-104 systems are commodity stuff these days.
This whole scheme just reeks of madness and a complete ignorance of the embeddable hardware on the market.
It's the dearth of comments like these that (Score:1)
the population will post such drivel.. I feel
safer knowing that no one else is going to beat
me at the projects I'm working on.
I like this guy's thinking.. It jives with mine
on a certain level.
Keep being morons (this goes to 89% of the population
of the earth) 'cause yer just gonna be paying
my company in the future.
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:2)
Rather I expect they're planning a motherboard with a PPC in a heavily shielded case, likely with a bunch of thermal stabilization tricks and no hard drive (I presume the gyroscopic effect, spin-transfer, and of course environmental requirements of a hard drive wouldn't be welcome.) A couple meg of solid-state memory would do just as well as a hard drive anyway since it's not gonna be running Photoshop or any bloaty MS applications.
I doubt it'll run MacOS 9 (why bring along all of the integral GUI for a remote device) but rather some Darwin derivitive. Why Darwin over some other random *nix? Probably 'cause one can assume Darwin will work really well on a Apple motherboard with Apple's own Northbridge etc.
All said however I do wonder why the insistance of using a general design over those from groups like Hams & Universities have come up with. Also why on using Apple hardware in particular over the legions of equally small and at this point relatively efficient embedded x86 (as in 386 & 486 eqiv.) motherboards? I can't imagine processing-power is a bottleneck in this kind of application.
Aside from that there's been a *lot* of non-big-name comsat design, much of it remarkably clever & low cost as well as at this point relatively well tested. Reinventing the wheel, even if it's using very off-the-shelf components seems like little savings over using off-of-a-smaller-but-still-cheap-shelf with tried-&-true hardware. At the costs they're talking about the risk/savings ratio just doesn't seem to work out.
Of course I'm neither a motherboard designer nor a comsat engineer so probably there's a lot I don't have a clue about...
Re:a market for cubes!? Damn Straight! (Score:1)
Re:Macs in space II (Score:1)
Oh, you mean that's NOT how it works?!
</sarcasm>
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Convection Cooling (Score:1)
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:2)
(Go ahead, go into any general electronics shop and ask the clerks to tell you one relevant thing about a computer product that's not on the card. It's not that everything is on the card, it's that they've had no training and know almost as little about computers as they do about French-Fryers, Car Audio & Talking Toasters (all departments they have also likely worked in the past month.))
Besides, Apple has negligible DOD sales these days. Consumer, Publishing, Graphics/Multimedia, Academia, and R&D institutions (particularly Bio folks) are the big Apple markets, military probably ranks after direct sales to "Hair Care Professionals".
Temperature problems? (Score:2)
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This is idiotic (Score:1)
Re:This is idiotic (Score:1)
Re:Macs in space II (Score:1)
Re:Technical and business issues (Score:2)
Who's actually going to pay the high wireless fees just to play online games? I don't see any other use for this beyond fast connect-disconnect services like email, small FTP transfers and quick searches.
And since we have more than enough alternatives to orbiting servers that are more efficient, easier to upgrade and maintain, cheaper and faster -- I don't see any serious application for this.
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seumas.com
Re:Technical and business issues (Score:1)
Iridium didn't succeed because they were charging upwards of $3 per MINUTE for their phone service, and the phone themselves cost many hundreds of dollars. These sats are supposed to be much cheaper, off-the-shelf parts, so I imagine the service would be a LOT cheaper.
Still don't think it will work though...
- Isaac =)
Re:What's that point.. (Score:1)
Re:Preview of the G5 cubes (Score:1)
Re:Windows too Crash Prone? What about the Mac? (Score:1)
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seumas.com
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:3)
Finally, by choosing a super-low albedo material for the outside (polished silver or white, for instance) he can reduce the mechanical stressing (which is caused by the temperature differential) by a lot, making this a viable cheap satellite.
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing (Score:1)
Re:Macs in space II (Score:1)
Thats not pathetic. Thats pragmatic. Welcome to the 21st Century. We will be in space this century. We will be building closed ecosystems.
:-)
Re:Macs in space II (Score:1)
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seumas.com
Re:Cooling? (Score:2)
I still stand by then "no temperature in space", "space has no temperature" is the same thing just phrased differently (though I just saw your point: mine is a little ambiguous). Radiation is not temperature as temperature is a measure of how much thermal energy is stored in a mass.
Solar wind wouldn't give you a vector I think, but it would give you a wind chill effect :) (mind you negligable due to it's sparsity).
Bill - aka taniwha
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Re:Convection Cooling (Score:2)
Re:Prone to crash??? (Score:2)
`ø,,ø!
Re:Cooling? (Score:2)
Another thing that has me concerned is that the guy is proposing just throwing it from the space station. In addition to resulting in a rather imprecise orbit, there's always the chance that it will hit the space station when it returns. While this isn't as bad as hitting an object orbiting in the oppsite direction (with impact speed = 2X orbital speed), an object that size could still do some damage to the space station.
I think this guy has an interesting idea, but as far as implementation goes, he's a kook.
Re:Prone to crash??? (Score:2)
RAM is a rather critical and highly-stressed component of computer systems, these days. In afterthought, it's not surprising that the RAM socket is a source of many failures.
`ø,,ø!
Re:Mac OS9? Running a satelite? Hope it's osX (Score:2)
No, it would not be. The App is not responsible for keeping the box up. Thats what the OS is for
Re:Upgrades? (Score:2)
AFAIR, the original power macs (60 to 80 MHz PPC601's), with their GeoPorts which were basically serial ports controlled by the CPU rather than an extra chip, could flood a T1 on each port, while still remaining relatively responsive for the foreground applications.
500 MHz G4's should be robust enough to tons of bandwidth flying through them...
The cost, (Score:2)
The problems is that it is a lot harder to replace a part that breaks down. That's why you don't want to use a Mac(or other end(l)user hardware). If a Mac or a PC for that matter was built with the same requirements for the MTBF as a satellite the price of the hardware would skyrocket(pun intended). The test required for each circut and chip would make it impossible to sell today.
So go ahead and launch your Mac into space, just don't me to go and fix it. well maybe I would like to but who's gonna pay.
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hm - READING (Score:4)
Nowhere does it say that a Mac cube will be used. Nowhere does it say that MacOS 9 will be used.
It's a 120 lb satellite, not engineered to withstand launch stresses, because it will be assembled in orbit. Many of the parts are off the shelf - including probably not more than a motherboard and CPU of a macintosh (much cheaper than designing a controller) - which will probably THINK it's running an Airport - but I'm betting it will be fooled into thinking that it's running airport when it's running some higher-powered device (airport range = 150 feet on disputed radio bandwidth (in France)), (his satellite range, altitude of 120 miles plus azimuth. .
In fact, I bet it will run Darwin, probably without a hard-drive, (probably some sheilded flash RAM device instead), and probably with lots of custom software (like TiVo runs Linux). (I'm guessing Darwin because it would be much easier to run the transceiver as Airport that way than trying to hack together something with Linux - BSD is supposedly more reliable than Linux anyway, but I digress and risk a flamewar).
Cooling will be an issue, and so might radiation, but a PPC chip will give him some pretty good computing power without worring about heat as much as with SOME OTHER solutions.
Of course, part of the 120 lbs will probably be gyros, solar panels, the transmitter and amplifier,
but the main gimmick here, is that he's using off the shelf parts, and assembling them in orbit, in an attempt to reduce costs. (in other words, he probably plans on all devices being launched from ISS or Shuttle, assembled in orbit). Yeah, the labor of assembling in orbit is probably LOTS higher, but you end up reducing the overall weight by bunches, by not having to design solar-panel deployment systems, shrouds, and shock-resistant innards.
If he's planning on spending $10 million on the first device (instead of hundreds of millions for standard communications satellites), it sounds like a worthy project to me (*cough* irridium)
Macs in space II (Score:2)
I don't think so. Off the shelf components will not survive the temperature and radiation extremes. A solar storm would kill them all, and shielding them is not too easy.
Real life uptime (Score:2)
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I am Moldy.
Mac Uptime "Good Enough." (Score:2)
Macs become unstable when you dump a crapload of extensions, control panels, fonts, third party software, plugins for third party software, plugins for plugins for third party software, and, well, you get the drift.
Clear the cruft out of the system folder, use only proven, reliable third party software and damn little of it, and the lowly and much maligned Mac can keep cranking the bits month after month with the younicks big boys. Figure in some scheduled downtime every so often for a pre-emptive reboot, and it will be spiffy for as long as they're up there.
Why bother putting up with three minutes downtime out of a week? Security. You can lock a mac down harder than a Unix or windows box. Simplicity. Configuring these bad boys will be a breeze. Plus, tools like RealBasic and Applescript make coding applications and scripts painless and powerful...without sacrificing reliability.
Put anything that says "Netscape" or "Quark" on there, and the mission is doooooooomed!
Just 'cuz the consensus has it that Macs are inherently unreliable, doesn't mean it's neccesarily true, or that the "unreliability" is a liability to steep to be surmounted. Question consensus, and do a little thinking and research for yourself.
SoupIsGood Food
Re:Macs in space II (Score:2)
And just what's wrong with this? As far as I'm concerned space as a been a private playground for a government chosen elite for far too long. Someday I want to be able to take a vacation in space, opening up the ISS to anyone who can afford the trip is a good thing IMO, because it's paving the way for the rest of us to get up there.