[Liberator]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon

Hate to break it to you but the space shuttles were still using 8086 components. By the time we discover the Vasudans, NASA *might* have gotten around to making the jump to Pentiums and pocket calculators.

That's too depressing to be a lie.  If they'd get out of the mindset that they must use their stuff exclusively they'd get places faster.  I mean it really rams it home when you see a photo of an astronaut with a Thinkpad, and realize that it has more processing power and data storage than the SPACECRAFT it's in.

[diamondgeezer]

What was the quote about the Apollo lander? 'It couldn't add two numbers together'...

[Sesquipedalian]

But then, why would it need to?  It did the job, eh?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Hate to break it to you but the space shuttles were still using 8086 components. By the time we discover the Vasudans, NASA *might* have gotten around to making the jump to Pentiums and pocket calculators.

The thing is that NASA say that they use old processors not cause they are cheap but because larger processors are less suceptible to the effects of cosmic rays.

The closer you jam all the components together on the chip the larger the chance is that a single cosmic ray can take out the whole lot.

[TopAce]

Don't get my NASA thing serious!
I was just trying to joke.

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by karajorma


The thing is that NASA say that they use old processors not cause they are cheap but because larger processors are less suceptible to the effects of cosmic rays.

The closer you jam all the components together on the chip the larger the chance is that a single cosmic ray can take out the whole lot.

Yeah, it would kinda suck to put a supercomputer in the Shuttle and then watch it get nuked by gamma rays (or even more powerful EM radiation).

[Flipside]

Such as a Mekhu sidearm

I suppose theres no way one of these master coders could create an ANI file that run on multiple DDS files instead of PCX's? I know someone would then have to update ANIBuild etc, but it would really be a dream come true for those wanting to do some nice effects

Flipside

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by Flipside
Such as a Mekhu sidearm

That would blow the whole damned Shuttle up.

[TopAce]

Thread has been hijacked.

[Flipside]

I believe I was asking about higher than 256 colour animation possibilities?

Flipside

[HotSnoJ]

At least a "something to ani" converter that acts like a mp3 2 pass conversion. then the ani's would have the best color palett (sp?).

[_argv[-1]]

What is this DDS stuff all about? Why can't we just use PNG/JNG/MNG? There's already libs for it, and it gives you such nifties as lossless (PNG standard) or lossy (JPEG, in JNG) compression (or a mix of both in MNG animations), arbitrary frame rate animations (MNG), and an alpha channel.

Originally posted by karajorma


The thing is that NASA say that they use old processors not cause they are cheap but because larger processors are less suceptible to the effects of cosmic rays.

The closer you jam all the components together on the chip the larger the chance is that a single cosmic ray can take out the whole lot.

So shield it? Can that provide the necessary protection, like the atmosphere does for computers on the ground?

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Hate to break it to you but the space shuttles were still using 8086 components. By the time we discover the Vasudans, NASA *might* have gotten around to making the jump to Pentiums and pocket calculators.

With that kind of technology, the Vasudans will discover us...

[karajorma]

Originally posted by _argv[-1]
So shield it? Can that provide the necessary protection, like the atmosphere does for computers on the ground?

The computers probably are shielded anyway. Cosmic rays are pretty powerful. You'd need a lot of shielding to block them all out. All shielding can do is minimise the chance of one hitting. I'm guessing that using larger processors is a way of minimising the chance of a catastrophic failure.

[Fry_Day]

On the NASA subject, the only real way to solve the problem is redundancy. Lots of it.

On to the MNG/JNG stuff, the point is that all formats except (and I'm not suer about that) .dds are converted internally to 16-bit, so even well-done 256-color stuff actually loses quality.

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by Fry_Day
On to the MNG/JNG stuff, the point is that all formats except (and I'm not suer about that) .dds are converted internally to 16-bit, so even well-done 256-color stuff actually loses quality.

Why?

Originally posted by karajorma
The computers probably are shielded anyway. Cosmic rays are pretty powerful. You'd need a lot of shielding to block them all out. All shielding can do is minimise the chance of one hitting. I'm guessing that using larger processors is a way of minimising the chance of a catastrophic failure.

DNA is far more intricate and fragile than any computer, and is very sensitive to cosmic rays and other ionizing radiation. If the cosmic rays are powerful enough to penetrate the hull of the spacecraft and the shielding on the computers, they should also cause massive cancer among the humans in space. Or am I missing something?

[Flaser]

Originally posted by _argv[-1]


Why?



DNA is far more intricate and fragile than any computer, and is very sensitive to cosmic rays and other ionizing radiation. If the cosmic rays are powerful enough to penetrate the hull of the spacecraft and the shielding on the computers, they should also cause massive cancer among the humans in space. Or am I missing something?

The statement is actually a 100% true, except for the cancer part.

The DNA is a still smaller than a trasistor inside a CPU, and while a single loss could kill a processor, your DNA could manage sine it has special enzimes to repair itself.
The DNA is also extremely redundant. Most of the time (for most of the chromosomes) you have twice the ammount of data you need, so even if one set is corrupted, the other can take over.
There's redundancy even inside a single strain!
Still not every mutation is fatal - far from it!
Finally the human immune system destroys these alien cells the minute they are spawned if it realises their difference, so "genetic racism" actually works inside your own body.
So you see an actual severe cancer is not as likely as CPU kicking the box.

Still astrounauts recieve lot more radiation than ordinary humans (but not as much as people in Hiroshima), but they're still protected.
The Van Allen belts protect them from most of the lethal solar winds and radiation.

BTW really high energy cosmic radiation can even penetrate the Earth like it was thin air!

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by Flaser
The statement is actually a 100% true, except for the cancer part.

The DNA is a still smaller than a trasistor inside a CPU, and while a single loss could kill a processor, your DNA could manage sine it has special enzimes to repair itself.
The DNA is also extremely redundant. Most of the time (for most of the chromosomes) you have twice the ammount of data you need, so even if one set is corrupted, the other can take over.
There's redundancy even inside a single strain!
Still not every mutation is fatal - far from it!
Finally the human immune system destroys these alien cells the minute they are spawned if it realises their difference, so "genetic racism" actually works inside your own body.
So you see an actual severe cancer is not as likely as CPU kicking the box.

Yeah, I forgot about the fact that DNA is so resistant to damage.

So, you could put the fastest CPU in existence today in, but it would have to be huge with lots of redundant components, failover, error detection/correction, etc. And it still can't regenerate. Yuck.

I wonder what kind of shielding would be needed to give it the radiation resistance of humans? Lots of lead? Some fancy layer of contained gas? An EM field?

Still astrounauts recieve lot more radiation than ordinary humans (but not as much as people in Hiroshima), but they're still protected.
The Van Allen belts protect them from most of the lethal solar winds and radiation.

That brings me to another subject: the Van Allen belts won't help much on interplanetary voyages. What would be necessary to protect astronauts going to/from Mars, for instance? A strong but small EM field around the ship? How would one power it? An onboard nuclear reactor?

BTW really high energy cosmic radiation can even penetrate the Earth like it was thin air!

Neutrinos? Those barely leave any indication they were ever there. That's why they're so hard to detect. Remember, they have zero mass and zero charge. I don't think I've heard of anything else that can penetrate a planet like thin air. Have you?

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by _argv[-1]
I wonder what kind of shielding would be needed to give it [CPU] the radiation resistance of humans?.... An EM field?

What, you wanna fry the thing yourself?

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by Sandwich


What, you wanna fry the thing yourself?

Point. An EM field might protect humans, but it might do Bad Things™ to the circuitry of a computer -- bend the delicate microscopic wiring, alter electron flow in unpleasant ways, generate electrical currents that burn it out, or some other such stuff.

But then, maybe not -- CRTs generate powerful EM fields, and while many computer monitors of this sort have shielding on the sides to avoid inserting noise into the output of nearby speakers, some (particularly old ones) do not. Yet I have never heard of such CRTs damaging nearby microelectronics.

Cosmic rays are ionizing, and unless I'm mistaken, ionizing radiation has inherently high penetration. The EM fields from computer monitors, microwave ovens, and other such EM fields from devices in civilian use are not ionizing (the wavelength is too high), and some frequencies have a hard time penetrating anything (like visible light). Since the worst I've ever heard of an EM field doing to high-tech devices is creating speaker noise and wiping the contents of magnetic recording media, could it be that microelectronics are simply not affected by non-ionizing EM fields? Is it because they are too weak? Could a sufficiently strong EM field deflect cosmic rays? Could such a field damage microelectronics because it is too strong?

[karajorma]

I don't think the penetration of the ray is linked to the fact that it is ionising or non-ionising. Gamma rays are non ionising radiation but they are very penetrating. Alpha particles on the other hand are most ionising of the three common types (alpha, beta and gamma). yet they can be stopped by a piece of paper!

Cosmic rays aren't actually EM despite the name. They are actually particles travelling at a fair proportion of the speed of light.

As long as the ray is charged you could deflect it with a EM field but if the particle is a neutron then the field won't do much about it.