The Ancient Computers Powering the Space Race

An anonymous reader writes "Think that the exploration of space is a high tech business? Technology dating back to the Apollo moon landings is still used by Nasa mission control for comms and the 1980s 386 processors that keep the International Space Station aloft."

This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought everyone was aware of this by now. :-/

Makes sense

[Pojut]

Given how wonky IT and communication upgrades can be, it makes sense to keep these systems the same for as long as possible. I imagine that after the Shuttle is fully and completely retired, NASA will begin to take a serious look at their aging hardware.

Part of the Problem

[Sonny Yatsen]

It's not that simple to just update NASA's technology. Yes, a lot of NASA's computer systems are antiquated, but they've also been vetted and engineered so that all the bugs and kinks have been worked out. They can update the technology, but they'll have to go through the whole process of figuring out where all the bugs are all over again. Unlike buying a buggy desktop application, though, when NASA has a bug, lives and millions of dollars are at stake.

Old sometimes better than new...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because they're using old, outdated equipment doesn't mean that they can't do their job efficiently. I've got a 6 year old Powerbook running Ubuntu 10.04 on a PowerPC G4 and it runs just fine. I think the whole "race to the bottom" in the industry has placed even more fact in the statement "they don't make them like they used to." After all, we've got limitless power and they have limited power. It's probably more efficient to wait on a few processes to complete than have massive power failure because some astronaut tried to play Crysis on his terminal.

If it's not broke...

[g0bshiTe]

Don't fuck with it.

Re:Wait a minute...

[Sonny Yatsen]

By federal law, any product of the Federal Government cannot be copyrighted (and thus, it's probably even less encumbered in that regard than FOSS). Of course, good luck getting them to disclose it.

Re:B-2 Stealth

[OzPeter]

What is the point of this article?

I think the point of this article is to show the disconnect between the "oh-look-new-shiny-shiny" crowd who have to download and install their latest favorite application from nightly builds vs the "if-it-fucks-up-someone-gets-hurt" crowd who actually have a clue about reliability.

High-tech?

[guyminuslife]

When did "high-tech" become synonymous with "has a lot of transistors"?

Not surprised

[JLangbridge]

I'm not surprised, not at all. The A320 ELAC uses 3 68k chips, and the A320 SEC uses an 80186 and even an 8086 chip. Why? For lots of reasons. Basically, it doesn't require billions of instructions per second, it doesn't need to access gigabytes of memory, and most importantly, they are proven chips that have gone through years of testing, and they are relatively simple. At the time they were complicated, granted, but they were still within reach of severe quality control. Remember the problems Intel had with the Pentium and floating point calculations? Nothing serious, but still... The chip was so complex that problems crept into the design phase, and at 38000 feet, you do not want problems. To cite a fellow Slashdotter above, (thanks tekrat), Critical systems require reliable, proven, hardened hardware, not flakey netbooks. Enough design faults have crept into aeronautical design, so I can only imagine the space sector. NASA used to program everything in 68k because they were reliable, simple, fast enough, and because they had lots of really, really good engineers that knew every single aspect of the chips. Don't get me wrong, I love todays chips, and i7s look sexy, but with a TDP of 130W for the Extreme Edition chips, they just add problems. Running at 3.2GHz, with over a billion transistors, you are just asking for trouble. At those speeds and heat, problems do happen, the system will crash. Ok, not often, but with mission critical systems, just once is enough. Did anyone seriously expect the shuttle to run quad-cores with terabytes of RAM?

Re:286's

[ThatOtherGuy435]

I'm not sure if it is still the case but for a LONG time 286 processors were the only ones available that had been hardened against cosmic radiation and were rated for space. When you're lobbing people into space, it matters most what works and is proven, not what is fastest or the newest technology.

Yes but the other priority concern for space travel is size. Every square inch of space is critical. Space agencies must balance old-but-proven technology with newer but way smaller technology. My cell phone contains more processing power, memory, and data storage space than the entirety of 1960's era Mission Control.

Don't forget about heat, either. Heat dissipation in space is a pain in the ass, and throwing a few hundred extra watts of heat at every data problem is a lot less viable than it is under your desk.

Re:B-2 Stealth

[LWATCDR]

True. People don't understand that reliability and capability need more than speed.
These are the same folks that look at an IBM Z mainframe and compare it to an over clocked i7.

Many systems need enough CPU and memory to get a single job done. Once you have that amount of power the rest of the effort goes into making sure that the job always gets done.

Re:Virii

[gblackwo]

If we had as many dedicated virus writers coding viruses specifically for NASA, as we do coding viruses for windows, this would not likely hold true. Viruses affect only systems they were DESIGNED for. On the other hand, the BSG fan in me wants to wholeheartedly agree.

Re:This is news?

[TheRaven64]

It's slightly different in space, because radiation hardening is also an important factor. ESA uses a lot of SPARC32 chips, in the form of the (GPL'd) LEON, which was designed to be able to be created in rad-hardened versions by anyone, cheaply. Intel periodically produces rad-hardened versions of their chips, but they certainly don't do it for the latest versions (the transistor density for the hardened process isn't has high as for the consumer-grade process), so you have longer upgrade cycles, and you also need rad-hardened versions of all of the support chips, so it's worth skipping a few generations if something works.

And, really, there's nothing wrong with using a 386, if it's fast enough. Upgrading from a chip that is twice as fast as you need to one that is a hundred times as fast as you need is not an easy decision to make.

The military was still buying Z80s until a few years ago for a lot of things. They had Z80 code that worked, and had been very well tested. Hopefully everyone involved in space learned from Arianne that upgrading something requires (expensive) revalidation and testing of everything that interfaces with it.

Re:Old sometimes better than new...

[leonardluen]

also, Why does the Space shuttle or international space station even need that much processing power? even a 386 should be able to sample the air system a hundred times a second, while simultaneously playing solitaire. if they need processing power Nasa owns the #6, 84, 171, 172, and 221 supercomputers according to the top 500 list from june.

Nasa has no shortage of computational power. so send a reliable processor into space, then use a terminal connection down to the ground to do anything that requires any true processing power...of which nasa has more at their disposal than most of the rest of the world.

Laptops

[drumcat]

Man, the article makes it sound like NASA is allergic to tech. There's no reason not to bring up kick ass laptops and other non-essential tech that runs hella fast. But don't fuck with what works. It's kept a lot of NASA problems from becoming NASA disasters. Hyperbole will get you nowhere fast.

Re:Part of the Problem

[sunking2]

Lack of demand, lack of suppliers, customers with big budgets.

Re:This is news?

[edremy]

Depending on where you are, this may be a plus. The Mars Rovers (and the Sojourner as well) have to keep all of their electronics and some of the optics in a warm box that's heated with a couple of radioisotope sources. Their electric budgets are limited but the excess heat would be welcome.

Re:High-tech?

[guyminuslife]

Flamebait? Really?

You could run the ISS on a flip-flop and a popsicle stick, and it would still constitute "high tech."

Re:Makes sense

[plopez]

You could always emulate the OS on a "hardened" cpu. Just a thought.

Re:286's

[BrokenHalo]

True. And the reference to VMS and FORTRAN (always uppercase!) is somewhat misleading - there are plenty of contractors out there (and incidentally one in my chair) who can deal with that stuff. If NASA doesn't like employing old-timers, then more fool them. We're the ones with those skills.

Incidentally, Wikipedia mentions Intel saying they would cease production of the 386 in 2007. I wonder if they made good on that...

Re:If it's not broke...

[BitwiseX]

See that glowing thing in front of you? The thing you're reading this on? It's just like little pictures of cats and pyramids scratched onto stone tablets, only we fixed it.

not really.. we upgraded it.

I think you're taking his statement a bit out of context. You can't compare earthbound "image display" technology, with technology that's built to work outside of our own atmosphere (or even high altitude for that matter.) Lives, and LOTS of taxpayer money are at risk. If NO computer technology was certified as safe, I can guarantee you that our cosmonauts would feel a lot safer with an abacus and slide rule, than with a computer on board that has potential for failure.

So yeah, in the context of this discussion: "If it's not broke don't fuck with it." If there is a need for an upgrade, then by all means fuck with it.. for a very long time, and make sure it is very safe before using it in a program where the fault tolerance is minimal to non-existent, in conditions not meant for human survival, AND before we put some of our brightest minds aboard said craft.