Comment by bluedino
13 hours ago
That was probably an incredible amount of memory back then. And it probably cost $1,000 USD for 1KB. Who knows how much radiation-hardened space memory was. 10 times that?
13 hours ago
That was probably an incredible amount of memory back then. And it probably cost $1,000 USD for 1KB. Who knows how much radiation-hardened space memory was. 10 times that?
In consumer space, 69 KB of RAM (138 x 4 kbit chips) would cost around $1700 70s dollars for the entire package, ~$10k in modern dollars.
Radioationed hardened for space though — $50k-$100k in 70s dollars, roughly the price of a Silicon Valley house back then - $300k-$600k in today's money.
consumer space and space space chips.
Wouldn't they just put a lead plate around the computer? That can't cost 100k in 70s
Lead makes things worse, not better. High-energy particles go straight through a couple mm of lead no problem, and lead itself is radioactive anyways. The problem is when a particle punches straight through a chip, leaving some energetic charge behind. You won't stop that with a paper-thin layer of lead.
Also, lead is extremely dense.
2 replies →
Because lead turns a single high-energy particle (that would disturb a single bit and punch through) into a shower of many low-energy particles (that would disturb many bits AND induce lattice damage over a wide area).
lead being heavy, I wonder if that tradeoff wasn’t worth it?