John Muratore and the SpaceX approach to radiation hardening
November 19 2012 07:32:36 PM |
by Clark Lindsey, Managing Editor
Amy Svitak interviews John Muratore, SpaceX director of vehicle certification and previously "chief engineer of the shuttle program at NASA, and before that [...] shuttle flight director". He also "managed flight programs and built the mission control center that we use there today". Dragon's "Radiation-Tolerant" Design - Aviation Week.
He gives a vigorous defense of their approach to dealing with radiation. "The parts aren't hardened, the design as a total system is hardened": Some of the points he makes include:
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NASA has used the same approach in many of their systems such as the ISS and Shuttles.
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The Dragon rad hardening design passed many NASA and independent panel reviews
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The systems were tested with high radiation doses.
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The Dragon flight computers are actually organized iin three pairs for a total of six. Each in a pair continually checks the other one.
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The one pair that rebooted during the mission could have been easily re-synched technically but it would have required procedural coordination and communications with all the other partners on the ISS program and NASA decided there was no need for all that.
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The problem with rad harden parts is not the cost but the severe limits on both hardware and software capabilities.
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Huge practical advantages to using non-rad hardened. Can continually improve the capabilities. Already in third gen flight computer.
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SpaceX is planning long term for Mars missions and so take rad issues very seriously.
There are no plans for major changes to the flight computers:
We might make some slight procedural or software changes so we can get through the re-synching faster. But that's all. We're still talking about that. There's no requirement to make any changes. We met every safety requirement that NASA put on us. Every piece of hardware that had any kind of hit recovered 100%, completely. So the design functioned exactly the way it was intended to function.
BRC20th November 2012 4:38am
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