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What Is Your Idea of Extreme Engineering?

This week's issue of NI News shows NI products in some pretty extreme applications, like the Red Bull Stratos mission and the 2041 International Antarctic Expedition.

 

So, my question this month is, what would be your ideal extreme engineering adventure? 

 

Brittany

NI News/Content Specialist

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to making most efficient chips which can work in space and withstand to high electrical and mechanical pressures
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to make most efficient chips which can work in space and withstand to high electrical and mechanical pressures
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is it like extreme ironing? Smiley Very Happy

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Nato Sea Sparrow Missle System

 

I was weaned on NSSMS (now called Sea Chicken) and have found little since then that can match-up.

 

It had 27 modes of operation that would allow it to take battle damage to multiple parts of the system and still deliver the weapon. i will not try to list hem all but and extreme example would be;

 

Transmiter is system A down and reciever in system B is damaged AND the computer was destroyed.

 

Analog circuit would kick-in in using the transmitter from B to illuminate the target and A to track it while analog back-up circuitry solved the fire-control problem and kept the bird on target. 

 

 

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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Well that worked a bit better than this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey-pxV7qPZQ (language warning)

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@Hornless.Rhino wrote:

Well that worked a bit better than this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey-pxV7qPZQ (language warning)


 

I never got directly invloved with topedos so I can not say more than it looks like they have a low pressure problem.

 

Re: Sea Chicken and over-engineered...

 

Durring qualtifications we had an oppertunity to be proven using drones where we had to take out ... something like 3 targets with up to five birds. For the purposes of evealuating hit/miss we did not fire normal birds but rather telemetry birds where the warheds were replacd with telemetry gear. At the time (circa 1980) the Sea Sparrow used peanut tubes so the technology available at the time ruled out recording the info on-board the missle so all of the perfromance info was radioed back to teh ship where banks of reel to reel tapes were running to record the flights and determing hit/miss.

 

The criteria for a hit was based on the weapons characteristics. In the case of Sea Sparrow, it was a large grenade (expanding ring) intended to inflict enough damage to an air frame. So getting the bird to within (I believe) 40 feet was a undisputed kill. Outside that radius required an expert to "read the tea leaves".

 

So the day of the trials we were all excited and looking forward to launching five birds.

 

Enough background info...

 

Bird #1

 

Direct hit! No war head required. Massive ball of fire (as was reported to me since I ws down in Combat Control operating the MK-58A Search radar)!

 

Bird #2

 

So close it was declared a hit before the next drone was launched.

 

Bird #3

 

Direct hit! Again, just a big projectile with a load of tubes and resistors did the job.

 

Bird # 4

 

Word came down quickly that we were done. We had already destroyed two perfectly good drones and they did not want to waste any more.

 

I used to tell people "We could track and kil a nat if you could get it up to 200 knots*!'

 

* 200 knots was the minimum velocity required to introduce the required dopler shift used by the Fire Control Radar.

 

Ben

 

 

 

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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...and now for something complete LabVIEWish...

 

I have to be careful since the following description describes a comercial product offered by one of the other contributors to this forum, who I assisted in the design and development. I have never read of any other LV application that even comes close to the capabilities that were included.

 

Overview:

Develop an application capable of monitoring conditions 24 X 7 forever for an unspecified number of sensors.

 

Features:

1) sensor interface was distributed via serial with every collector battery backed-up and capable of storing reading if comm went down.

2) Sensor interfaces were controlled from FieldPoint nodes that would query sensors interfaces (if comm was available) and would transfer to main collection system when comm was available.

3) FP could buffer about a week of readings for all ofthe sensors in its network if Main app was down.

4) Handshaking between FP nodes and Main app were interlocked such that the data in the sensors interface was never deleted until the main app confiremed it was written to disk.

5) FP units handled all limits and alarms locallt in the event the main app was down.

6) All functions of the main app were tracked and logged such that a machine failure at anytime in the process could be recovered without data loss.

7) Backup transaction logs allowed fail-over to the secondary system if attempts to recover the primary failed due to disk failure.

 

I counted it as an honor to be allowed to contribute to that system. I had a FP node running for about 9 months on my desk. I used to get a kick out of power fails in the office when I would look up and still see the lights flashing.

 

Aside from the microcode running in the sensor interfaces, it was (and is) 100 % G.

Ben

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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...and Ben's contributions to that system live on in the second generation, directly and through tutelage.  Largest initial installation (33 cFP nodes, 400+ sensors) being installed next month.  Replaces our first, and largest, DOS installation, startup ~1993 or so.  Thanks Ben.

 

Matt

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