
Nasa develops modular avionics systems for small missions - anigbrowl
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/brains-of-the-operation-nasa-team-develops-modular-avionics-systems-for-small-missions
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ortusdux
SpaceX ran into this issue too. Off the shelf parts are rare and prohibitively
expensive. Musk's biography goes into this a bit:

"But how do you know if a $5,000 radio designed in-house is going to work
against the tried-and-true legacy parts? How do you build the entire rocket's
avionics computer system for just over $10,000, when standard rocket companies
use systems that cost in the neighborhood of $10 million?

Well, you test both of them on the same flight. While we've been watching
SpaceX try to land a rocket on a boat, Vance notes that the company has been
performing dozens of experiments in secret. It'll load a rocket with both the
legacy part and the one it's designed in house, and test them both without
making a big deal out of it."

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agumonkey
A bit unrelated but I've been told biohacklabs reimplemented lab/med
equipement for a hundredth (even a thousandth) of the price. Not 2015 state of
art, but still usable.

Free market has blind spots.

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Eridrus
> Free market has blind spots.

Not sure this is blind spots so much as regulation. You can built it for far
less, but you can't get it approved as safe.

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hackuser
> You can built it for far less, but you can't get it approved as safe

You can build anything for less. Safety isn't a regulation issue, it's an
issue of harming human beings. I'm very glad for those regulations.

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monkmartinez
We need to bring pain back. Humanity has become soft in most first world
countries. Eliminating pain is big, big problem.

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sverige
It's great when tech is advanced like this, but why do all government programs
require ridiculous acronyms?

MUSTANG, short for the Modular Unified Space Technology Avionics for Next
Generation.

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divbit
Who wouldn't jump at the chance to make a kickass acronym.

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brohoolio
GOES-R is my person favorite.

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jon_richards
I still think USA PATRIOT is the most impressive, though it's followup USA
FREEDOM is pretty good.

