Is it true that ordinary computers dont work in space?
Posted
February 24, 2009 
Comments(7)
Comments(7)
wisemancumth asked:
I heard once, but on a rather old show that regular computers dont work in space because they are effected by cosmic rays and magnetism. So if thats the case what do they do to make them work? Is that why you dont see astronauts using laptops and blackberries?
AHHA!!!! maybe there is a shred of truth in your question
Computers DO work in space, they might have ERRORS once in a while, but over all they DO work. What do you think is running all the shuttle’s systems?
An abacus?
gee. I wonder what all these buttons are connected to?
OH LOOKY!!! (and these are just laptops errrrr walltops?)
the computer that was running the Hubble space telescope
To an astronaut, a black berry is a child’s toy capable of receiving email from cell phone towers that aren’t even in range.
BUT this guy has an ipod on the shuttle. He looks soooo happy that he can listen to Hanna Montana !!!!
its the white ipod right above the black thing on the wall above his right hand
after researching, I don’t know if i want to slap you or hug you.
ooo
No they work fine. in the old days there were some issues with hard drives flying appropriately over the surface of the magnetic disk platter, but sealed disk drives have solved this problem.
A standard desktop computer probably wouldn’t work very well in a vacuum. Magnetic fields and cosmic rays aren’t a particular hazard, but most desktop computers rely on fans to blow air through them and cool them, and without any air they would very quickly overheat and destroy themselves.
It’s rubbish.
Space Station astronauts use IBM A31p laptops all over the place in the US lab. Used to be 760s until they were upgraded a couple years ago.
They have tablet PCs up there, and handheld PDAs.
Yes, cosmic rays are an issue. We have problems from time to time with a piece of software misbehaving because a memory chip gets a bit flipped by a cosmic ray. But that’s not common, and just requires restarting the program.
Shuttle computers aren’t ordinary, though. They’re very old, special purpose machines. Your Palm Pilot probably has more computing power…
Actually, many probes are still run by 386 chips as they were pretty well shielded. The newer chips are not as well shielded.
In applications where speed is not important, the older, better shielded chips can still be used. It is because of the shielding that they used to be said better suited for space work.
For the newer chips, we needed to provide external shielding.
But, that was in the good ol’ days…
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As for astronauts not using blackberries, could be a connection problem (most work with communication towers which, compared to the position of the shuttle, are puny little zits on the face of the Earth)
Radiation must be allowed for, but what on Earth does magnetism have to do with it?
The main issues nowadays are power consumption and heat dissipation. Mission-critical systems are protected with specialized fault-tolerant hardware and error correcting memory. I tested a prototype error correcting memory controller for a satellite when I was at school…
GPS satellites have serious radiation shielding, because they are in a very different radiation environment than ISS and the Shuttle. They don’t transit it like Apollo did; they stay there, all the time.
When Mir had its leak a few years ago there were a couple of laptops in the module that depressurized. They still worked when they were retrieved.
No, it’s not true. They just won’t be very reliable and they might be actually destroyed by radiation. Magnetism is not an issue. Spacecraft use special, rad-hard integrated circuits to cope with the problem. But those chips are now usually carbon-copies of existing computer architectures. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Astronauts are using laptops, but who would they be calling on a blackberry?