Avionics upgrade strategies for the Space Shuttle and derivatives

Author

Swaim, Richard A. ; Wingert, William B.

Author_Institution

IBM Corp., Houston, TX, USA

fYear

1990

fDate

15-18 Oct 1990

Firstpage

322

Lastpage

325

Abstract

Some approaches aimed at providing a low-cost, low-risk strategy to upgrade the Shuttle onboard avionics are described. These approaches allow migration to a Shuttle-derived vehicle and provide commonality with Space Station Freedom avionics to the extent practical. IBM´s Federal Sector Division is studying alternatives for upgrading the Shuttle´s cockpit. Some goals of the upgrade include: offloading of the main computers by distributing avionics display functions, reducing crew workload, reducing maintenance cost, and providing display reconfigurability and context sensitivity. Software development using Ada is discussed. Advanced active matrix liquid crystal displays are used to meet the tight space, weight, and power consumption requirements. These displays are tied to commercially available 80386 microprocessors

Keywords

Ada; aerospace instrumentation; liquid crystal displays; space vehicles; Ada; IBM; Space Shuttle; Space Station Freedom; active matrix liquid crystal displays; aerospace instrumentation; avionics; cockpit; context sensitivity; crew workload; display reconfigurability; maintenance cost; onboard avionics; Active matrix liquid crystal displays; Aerospace electronics; Computer displays; Cost function; Distributed computing; Liquid crystal displays; Programming; Space shuttles; Space stations; Space vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Digital Avionics Systems Conference, 1990. Proceedings., IEEE/AIAA/NASA 9th

Conference_Location

Virginia Beach, VA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/DASC.1990.111308

Filename

111308