NASA solved a $100M vibration problem cheaply by strobing the display

Ares 1 was a terrible idea. Putting humans on top of solid rocket motors is bad enough when they are boosters alongside a more traditional liquid fueled stage that can smooth out the oscillations, but that still does nothing about the fact that you can't shut down solids, and all abort scenarios involve just waiting until the SRBs burn out. Having humans riding a rocket that's just a giant firecracker is insanity.

Back in the 1980s, in the days of MS-DOS, a client had a CRT monitor set up near some massive 3 phase power feeds inside a power plant, and the rotating magnetic fields made the display rotate rapidly in a circle about 1/2 inch in diameter.

To fix it, I wrote a program that put the computer in 640x480 bitmapped text mode, which slowed the display of text down a bit, but altered the refresh rate to exactly match the power frequency, and the problem was solved. 8)

$5 in parts, untold amounts of resources and paychecks. Not $100,000,000, but magnitudes more than $5.

Misattributions like this is how we end up with people that value all things by their component cost.

Designing and testing it would have cost them more than $5, but substantially less than $100M. Nice solution.

This is such an awesome fix! I'm curious as to what portion of the aero / solid rocket motor causes these violent vibrations, specifically in the 10-12Hz range? Maybe I should've just finished my mechanical engineering degree instead of switching to EE / CS haha...

I love this fix. I have an analogous problem. I have a small powerboat. When speeding across even mildly choppy water, it can be difficult to read the navigation and instrument monitors. Wish I had the time and skills to make a hack for this.

What amplitude of oszillations are we talking here?