Radiation not as big a problem as previously thought? | Computer Systems Workgroup | Forum

I found an interview with some of the guys who do IT support for the ISS, and it contained some pleasant surprises on just how well earthly computer hardware runs up there.  I knew that they had a lot of Thinkpad laptops up there, but I always figured they had been modified by NASA to handle the environment.  It seems they haven't:

What kind of IT do you have up there?
"We have a significantly large network on board the Station, comprising 68 IBM ThinkPad A31 laptops and 32 Lenovo ThinkPad T61p
devices. One of the T61ps is a server, making it a client/server
network with a couple of routers and an Ethernet backbone. There are
both cabled routers and a couple of Wi-Fi access points up there.
There's also a dedicated IP phone for phone calls and some limited
video-conferencing abilities if astronauts need to see their families."

How do you choose what technology to use?
"Whenever we go to select a laptop
for flying, we have a certification process to determine the best ones.
We'll test it for how well it withstands radiation. [The ISS is exposed
to as much radiation in a day as computers down on Earth are in a
year.] We also test for off-gassing, in case the computer emits
chemicals that could create fumes on the Station.

"You'd be surprised at how many computers would survive on the
ISS. I can't think of an occurrence when we've have a computer fail
from the radiation itself. It may reduce the lifetime of how long we
can keep the equipment in orbit, but most of the time the failures are
just like the ones here on the ground — we'll have a hard-drive
failure or we'll have an application problem and end up reloading the
machine."

The emphasis in the last paragraph is mine, and is great news for us.  It sounds like the ThinkPad machines they have up there haven't been hardened at all, they just use them because they fare better than other commodity systems.  It sounds like NASA did some pretty serious testing as well, for multiple factors, so perhaps we should take advantage of that and use ThinkPad A31 and/or ThinkPad T61p systems ourselves?  These aren't as small and light as netbooks like the eeePC, but they're also certainly not large and heavy machines.

brmj said:

but it must be kept in mind that our stuff will have to deal with the Van Allen belts

Obviously very true, but it's nice to know that serious radiation problems will likely be limited to our pass through the belts, rather than a constant issue for the whole flight.

We should look into how long the passage through the Van Allen belts will last, and investigate the feasibility of turning most/all of our computers off at that time.  If it would only be a fairly short amount of time, we should be able to get away with this.

Luke Maurits said:

We should look into how long the passage through the Van Allen belts will last, and investigate the feasibility of turning most/all of our computers off at that time.  If it would only be a fairly short amount of time, we should be able to get away with this.

I read the other day that the Apollo spacecraft passed through the belts in about 15 minutes, which is not long at all.  I think it should be quite safe to power a lot of systems down for that time.  This eliminates the risk of single event upsets from the van Allen belts.  I don't know if the risk of actually physically damaging semiconductors is reduced particularly by switching them off, though.