NASA’s Orion spacecraft is the most futuristic spacecraft to ever be built, but the tech inside it is shockingly old school, like the onboard computer powering the entire mission, that’s basically only powerful as an 11 year old G3 iBook.
On Earth scientists are all about pursuing the bleeding edge of tech, but in space the number one concern is reliability. Thanks to the higher amounts of radiation astronauts will travel through on the way to Mars, NASA’s engineers have to use a system that’s been tried and test. So to power their computer they’re are using an IBM PowerPC 750FX, that debuted in 2002 and isn’t even as powerful as an iPhone 6.
The 750FX chips were originally released in 2002, and some version of the iBook G3 from 2003 carried the exact same chip NASA used for Orion’s computer. Some G3 iMacs also carried a less powerful version of the 750X processor reports Geek.com.
“The 750FX powering the Orion runs at 900MHz with a bus speed of 166 MHz, and 512KB of on-die L2 cache. It was manufactured with a 0.13 μm process (130 nm). For comparison, we’re now down to 14nm process technology in the Core M family of processors. In a direct core-to-core comparison, the 750FX is about as powerful as a the ARM chip used in a Samsung Galaxy SIII.
What it doesn’t have in processing power though the computer makes up for with extra radiation shielding. NASA also added thicker circuit boards and vibration resistant fasteners so it won’t be permanently damage on the long journey. The also tossed in two backup computers that are running the exact same software and constantly error checking each other for radiation anomalies, that way the odds of an entire system reboot will only occur once per 1,870,000 missions.
Via: Geek
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
11 responses to “Orion’s computer is basically a radiation-proof G3 iBook”
I have written spacecraft onboard software, and it is true that reliability is king. The interesting corollary to this i just how much processing you can get done on a cpu when you have the human time available to really optimise the software. Per the cost of the mission. the human time for coding is cheap, so you can really put some hours in and get slick outcomes – and it makes you really realise how inefficient the code is we use day to day.
The only thing that matters in aviation & space avionics is reliability.
New, fast, powerful, none of that matters.
Is it reliable? Does it work 100% of the time?
None of the avionics systems in the 1994 Boeing 777 I used to demonstrate ever needed to be “rebooted.” No software bugs. Rock solid performance is all that matters.
This is absurd. The idea that a 12 year old single core processor is more reliable than a 4 year old dual-core processor is just stupid. I guarantee you that a processor that is four years old will be more resilient than a 12 year old processor (and accompanying circuit board), has been plenty tested by millions of power users, gives you the added benefit of being more power efficient, and creating less heat ergo helping the circuit board last longer as well…which is also important in a space craft.
Ask yourself this: Would you use a 12 year old iBook G3 to crunch some heavy equations for a final project in class that will determine if you graduate or not or a 4 year old dual-core i5? Exactly. Why should our space crafts get any less extra measures?
Also, having more processing power than you require is always a great idea, giving your system plenty of breathing room for crunching life-saving numbers. As Apollo 13 showed us, you never know what might happen out there.
These are just rationalizations for being mediocre, a la why our “most futuristic spacecraft to ever be built” is just an upgraded capsule from 50 years ago. The space program is no longer a place to push the technological frontiers, giving us soooo many advances in the past. Instead of risk being a travel companion it is the boogyman, a mentality that has no place in space exploration.
Ladies and gentlemen, the state of our space program: Mediocrity and Timidity. How dare we not aim for more?
I disagree, if you look at it solely from a coding perspective, Efficient Code does not require as much processing capability as inefficient code.
It’s not like they are going to be mining Bitcoin from space. And as for your Education analogy, I would argue that if you were able to write your code to fully utilize the hardware in an old iBook G3, and were able to complete your final project with that code, I bet you could get extra credit not not only understanding the concepts and completing the assignment, but also for being able to do it with something that isn’t top of the line (which is normally what you run in to in the “real” world – less than optimal hardware constraints).
Mind you, this is just my 2¢, but I think that the Java VM for example has brought up a whole new batch of lazy programmers that are not willing to put in the effort to utilize every last bit, and really take the care to make truly good code.
You are wrong-de-wrong-de-wrong :)
This isn’t like just nipping out to Best Buy to grab some parts for a “final project in class”. This is sending fragile human lives into space at tens of thousands of miles an hour.
Show me the ark.intel.com page for a 4 year old processor where it says it’s shielded against the radiation of space, the vibration of a rocket launch, etc, etc. These things have to be developed by someone, and it takes time.
Go look around the insides of any super advanced aircraft or spacecraft, you will find that they are *always* based on surprisingly old computing technology. That’s because they have to be, because their demands are way way higher than ours, so they are always lagging behind. It’s also because it takes them so long to design and build their systems, that they lag significantly.
The Orion programme itself is already 3 years old, and is somewhat a continuation of the craft from the Constellation programme, which started planning in 2004. The Orion isn’t planning on getting humans to Mars until after 2030. Imagine how silly a G3 will look to your eyes then, yet it will still be perfectly capable of doing the job, and will have decades of trust built up.
In short, no to what you said. No no no :)
It has nothing to do with mediocrity and timidity; it has everything to do with cost and reliability. Modifying a processor to be radiation hardened costs a fortune. Once that process is done, the chips stick around for a while because the money that would be required to needlessly upgrade the chip can be spent on other parts of the spacecraft that need it more.
To sum up what the other three said: you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Go back to homeroom.
The mars rover has very similar hardware.
“a system that’s been tried and test.”
“so it won’t be permanently damage on the long journey.”
Where are the editors? What happened to proofreading?
How many grammatical and spelling mistakes can a 4 paragraph story have?
The G3 was a PowerBook, not an iBook…among other errors…