[time-nuts] Space mission comes to an end becuase of a "computer time tagging" problem

[Magnus Danielson]

On 09/21/2013 03:26 PM, Jim Lux wrote:
> On 9/21/13 6:03 AM, Magnus Danielson wrote:
>> On 09/21/2013 02:52 PM, Bob Camp wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> So it's a pretty good AT cut crystal without any compensation of
>>> heating. Not quite a cheap wrist watch, but not a BVA in a dewar
>>> flask either.
>> The environmental perturbations should go quite slow most of the time,
>> as it glides in the void slowly away and often have a fairly stable
>> direction with regards to the sun. If they have spin-rotation it
>> complicates things a bit.
>>
>> Decent dewar-flask with better background radiation and one major heat
>> source that you track for the solar panels.
>>
>
> Yeah, there's jokes about why are they obsessing about hermetic seals
> on components when we're going to be operating in a harder vacuum than
> you can easily achieve on earth. The outside of the package probably
> has a lower pressure than inside the package.
True. The trouble is really what happens prior to reaching that hard vacuum.

You could do a in space pumping by having the thing pressurized and then
heat up a lead-plug until it melts and the pressure shoots out the blob,
gas and eventually the innards decays into hard vacuum. If you do that
early in the mission, the handling the shift is relatively easy as C/N
ratios is favorable.

Cheers,
Magnus