How your phone is more powerful than ORION

dailymail.co.uk

18 points·dnetesn··8 comments

Interesting that the dailymail looks and reads like the onion only it pretends to be for real:

The chips do not error check each other but instead perform exactly the same tasks, so that they can check the other for errors.

Also, according to the article there is only double redundancy. I thought critical systems like this always employed triple redundancy. It doesn't help too much if you detect a fault during launch and have to reboot both systems...

TL;DR: Orion uses rad-hardened chips, which are usually very slow compared with commodity hardware. But it also runs super-optimized and highly specialized code.

Also, people, I feel, get this impression that because Windows 8 takes forever to load and then Word takes an eternity, that they _need_ that speed. No, you need less bloated programs, and (I would seriously hope) that missile/rocket/spacecraft guidance and life support computers are not running bloated software!

Hopefully ORION has a better battery life than my phone

Firstly I am surprised the Daily Mail created this piece, their readers care more about spending money on the NHS rather than space.

Secondly I was a little puzzled but the statement that Orion could be used to send people to Mars. If that were true then does that mean we are leaving them there to die?

Daily Mail is a rag. I wouldn't believe anything they publish. I'm surprised it isn't blocked.

How there will be more computing power dedicated to ORION while on mission than the daily mail can imagine.

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