the trouble with antiques

[totient]

The Space Shuttle is an antique. The design is pure 1970s, down to the rad-hard Z80 processors in its main computer. To get software to fit into a Z80 you have to jettison every possible bell and whistle. In particular, the Shuttle's software is so dumb that it was immune to Y2K bugs, because there wasn't room to store the year in the date representation.

Handy, but this has a side-effect: the Shuttle can't be on orbit at New Years.

There's a workaround for emergency missions, but the point here is that like an antique car, the Shuttle is not a rainy-day vehicle, and trying to turn it into one is hopeless.

Comments

And that would be???

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

And the work around is to set the date forward to the equivalent number in January before you take off or something like that? July might do better in that you have two 31-day months in a row (July, August to match December, January). But, can the shuttle even stay in orbit for more than 31 days???

[muffyjo]

What about a retro-fit? Upgrading the hardware computer bits (they are decidedly smaller now, among other things). I mean, they have the most insanely clever people in the world working for them (possibly litterally). They could upgrade the parts which would be decidedly smaller and encase them in larger housings to fit the old spaces...

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out!

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

The reason they're still using old tech is that it takes a very long time to certify computer components are safe for manned space flight.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

The ESA has been using their LEON2 rad-hard, fault tolerant SPARC clone in space for a decade. And there are space-certified PowerPC and Pentium clones.