William Atkins
Thursday, 09 April 2009 20:37
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 3
Although general aspects of the second program to send U.S. astronauts to the Moon in the 2010s may seem similar to the first program in the 1960s, it’s really a whole new ball game out there in space when you compare Apollo to Constellation.
NASA is preparing to return astronauts to the Moon beginning around the year 2020. As its April 8, 2009 article states in its title “Beyond Apollo: Moon Tech Takes a Giant Leap," there really is a big difference in how we did it back in the 1960s and how we will do it in the 2010s.
NASA states,
“It worked well enough for Apollo. Back then, astronauts stayed on the lunar surface for only a few days at a time. But when NASA sends people back to the Moon starting around 2020, the plan will be much more ambitious — and the hardware is going to need an major upgrade.”
Four major points are made by NASA in its article “
Beyond Apollo: Moon Tech Takes a Giant Leap” as to differences in 1960s technology and 2010s technology.
COMPUTER
First, the computer onboard the six Apollo
Lunar Modules (LEMs, or Lunar Excursion Modules) that landed on the Moon had 4 kilobytes (KB) of RAM (random assess memory) and a 74-KB hard-drive. I think my toaster has that computing power today!
The Constellation's
Altair, which like the LEMs has a descent stage and an ascent stage, is envisioned to have a computer system and cockpit similar to the one onboard the Boeing 787 (“Dreamliner”) aircraft.
According to TGDaily.com the Boeing 787 system consists of an array of LCD displays that is described as a
“glass cockpit” that will each have a computer powered by a low-power CPU and an ATI graphics chip. [TGDaily.com: “
Boeing 787 cockpit revealed”] [corrected 4/12/09]
For additional information on the B787 computer system, check out Aviation Today’s article “
B787 Cockpit: Boeing’s Bold Move.”
Page two talks about the second and third differences.
