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Re:Kicksat burned up, including Sprites by sigil on Friday May 16, 2014 @10:18PM (#7759014)
Were the components radiation-hardened, or did they just wing it?
Re:Kicksat burned up, including Sprites by akiselev on Friday May 16, 2014 @10:36PM (#7759059)
Aerospace grade radiation hardened computers start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per CPU and with a cost equal to or greater (usually the latter) than the launch cost, they just aren't worth it for CubeSats that aren't carrying critical payloads (piggy back launches are $200-500k depending on institution affiliation).

A little shielding is enough to protect the CPU from permanent damage for a while and error correction circuits using 3-7 or more CPUs running in parallel is way cheaper, even including engineering costs, than a single CPU.

Even with the troubles, one hell of a success for $70,000.

Re:Kicksat burned up, including Sprites by userbinator on Friday May 16, 2014 @10:48PM (#7759088)
start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per CPU

Not really, depending on the performance you want:

http://www.intersil.com/en/products/space-and-harsh-environm...

It's a little over $100, which isn't all that much when you consider that this is a CPU that has been used successfully in space before by NASA.

(I remember a short while ago on an electronics forum there was a discussion about either this or a similar project - can't remember - where someone bet that they were certainly going to fail because they weren't using rad-hard parts. This data point certainly supports that.)

Re:Kicksat burned up, including Sprites by akiselev on Friday May 16, 2014 @11:46PM (#7759165)
Yes, that chip was used on the Galileo satellite but the Silicon-on-Sapphire version that NASA used for that mission is significantly more expensive. The $100 version has error correction built in but it's only rad hardening is any packaging and specs (low power + slow clock speed). A current generation rad hardened CPU comparable to the SOS version in the Galileo would be the RAD750 [1]. Several Arduinos in a lead box would be roughly equivalent to the consumer RCA 1802 chips.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750

Re:Kicksat burned up, including Sprites by rdl on Saturday May 17, 2014 @12:07AM (#7759194)
I wonder how much of that is inherent manufacturing cost vs. low volumes recovering R&D.

Also, any compliance issues around rad hard components (they're also used in nuclear weapons, and fairly restricted as a result)

Re:Kicksat burned up, including Sprites by akiselev on Saturday May 17, 2014 @12:43AM (#7759254)
I don't have exact numbers but from my limited experience I would say about 30% of the price is the cost of setup and production (human labor, materials, capital depreciation) and the rest of the price minus profit is administrative, sales, and regulatory cost. Silicon design is getting cheaper, especially with FPGAs, and the designs are relatively flexible while the sheer amount of time required to set up a manufacturing line to produce even a single processor is very expensive. Like the RCA 1802 linked above, a single silicon design can be used for decades in mission critical applications as the revenue piles up and the costs to tweak the design fall. When you're the only one buying a setup for a rad hardened manufacturing process and producing only a dozen chips for your client, slipping in several experimental revisions on the mask can sometimes be almost free.

Most compliance issues are barriers to entry but are largely overblown. In fields like aerospace and nuclear weapons the most critical requirement is abundant reliability and lifetime data which is why, regulation or no, you will never put something like an Intel 60nm or lower processor into a critical $100 million satellite.

Re:Kicksat burned up, including Sprites by rdl on Saturday May 17, 2014 @04:38AM (#7759608)
I'm mostly wondering if there could be a business case (or hobby project) to make medium volumes of non custom rad hard chips for cost constrained aerospace projects.
Re:Kicksat burned up, including Sprites by dethtron5000 on Friday May 16, 2014 @10:42PM (#7759075)
Has no one learned from the Fantastic Four's rocket trip?
Re:Kicksat burned up, including Sprites by _superposition_ on Saturday May 17, 2014 @11:32AM (#7760400)
Downvoted? I thought that was funny. Sad turn of events for KickSat, but you have to laugh somehow. This is the first I heard of the project. I'll be watching for and hopefully backing KickSat2.