[Ground-station] Satellite program

[Bdale Garbee]

Robert McGwier via Ground-Station
<ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> writes:

> I can relate the tale that the strongest delivered proclamation I ever
> received from Karl Meinzer was to never attempt this at all.  He was
> adamantly opposed to multiple processors and handoffs in spacecraft.

Yep.  He was intense about this in the Phase 5 early meetings.

I've often thought that if faced with the need to develop a seriously
radiation tolerant IHU, I'd want to at least re-consider Lyle's Am1601
proposal circa 2001.  Perhaps an updated derivative, since 32 bit
math is something we mostly take for granted now, and see if it could
be made to fit in a modern rad-hard FPGA.  

Perhaps our lust for on-orbit computation in support of SDR-style signal
processing makes this less attractive today.  But I can't help wonder if
there might be immense value in separating control functionality into a
really simple IHU... leaving complex signal processing to happen in
"peripheral" processors that might run with acceptably higher radiation
risk since they could be "drop kicked" when needed?  

[shrug]  Food for thought.

73 - Bdale, KB0G
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 832 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.openresearch.institute/pipermail/ground-station-openresearch.institute/attachments/20180601/1b9af7dc/attachment.sig>