Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!attctc!convex!dodson
From: dodson@convex.com (Dave Dodson)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: New Computer, Erasable Optical Disk
Message-ID: <4831@convex.convex.com>
Date: 23 Jan 90 14:37:49 GMT
References: <15104@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Sender: usenet@convex.com
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation; Richardson, TX
Lines: 20

In article <15104@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes:
#How Bout That Dept.: The new AvWeek reports that NASA's going to
#qualify their first new flight computer in 19 years for the Shuttle,
#a 2 1/4 MIPS Raytheon supermini (licensed to DEC).
#The new system will be tested on a Hitchhiker payload bay experiment
#package this November.  If tests are OK they'll repeat in 1992.
#(By the time it's hopelessly obsolete, it should be about ready to
#fly as real mission hardware.)

Don't forget about software.  There are hundreds of man-years invested
in the current orbiter software.  Recoding and requalifying that for the
new hardware, almost certainly incompatible with the current hardware,
probably will take well beyond 1992.  When you consider the tenet that
you don't fix what isn't broken, it makes me wonder why they would even
consider changing the shuttle flight computer system.

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Dave Dodson		                             dodson@convex.COM
Convex Computer Corporation      Richardson, Texas      (214) 497-4234