Japan Controls Rocket Launch With Just 8 People and 2 Laptops 94
SpaceGhost writes "Sky News reports that the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) has launched an orbital telescope on a new generation rocket from the Uchinoura Space Centre in Kagoshima, in southwestern Japan. The Epsilon rocket uses an onboard AI for autonomous launch checks by the rocket itself (launch video). A product of renewed focus on reducing costs, the new vehicle required two laptops and a launch team of eight, compared to the 150 people needed to launch the previous platform, the M-5. Because of the reduced launch team and ease of construction, production and launch costs of the Epsilon are roughly half that of the M-5. The payload, a SPRINT-A telescope, is designed for planetary observation."
It's a solid rocket booster stack (Score:5, Informative)
The Epsilon rocket is three stages of solid rocket booster, like an ICBM. So there's no fueling on the pad, no plumbing, no cryogenics, and no turbopumps. The launch team has a lot less to do than with liquid-fueled rockets.
Re:Small solid rocket (Score:4, Informative)
True, but note that the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket doesn't need a gigantic ground crew at the launch site like you needed with the Space Shuttle. In fact, the crew needed to assemble, test and launch the United Launch Alliance Delta IV or Atlas V rockets are much smaller than they used to be, thanks to much more efficient rocket assembly buildings.
Re:Small solid rocket (Score:4, Informative)
Now considering NASA was doing all of Apollo by hand on a computer that was less advanced than a TI-83 (and that was ground side) then it makes sense.
Actually, NASA had initially several (five?) IBM 7094-II computers and later five IBM System/360 Model 75Js for the Apollo project. I also believe that both sets of machines had some nifty RT extensions both in HW and in the OS. The former ones had about 0.35 MFLOPS, and I think 32 Kwords of 36-bit memory; the latter ones had something like 1 MiB of 32-bit memory and something over 1 MFLOPS each. Your TI-83, on the other hand, has 32 KB of memory - a quarter the core memory of a 7094-II - and I can't imagine its 6 MHz Z-80 doing a double-precision floating point operation in under 20 cycles, which you'd need to match the 7094-II's performance. Don't even think about comparing your TI-83 to the Model 75 (and even *that* was outdated when NASA started receiving model 91 (that packed whopping 16 MFLOPS) tops when the first missions were going to Moon - obviously, they didn't upgrade mid-project).