>A radiation hardened PowerPC 750 operates no differently from a PowerPC 750 you'd find on Ebay. The RAD750 costs $200k. I doubt the ARM processor in Ingenuity

>A radiation hardened PowerPC 750 operates no differently from a PowerPC 750 you'd find on Ebay. The RAD750 costs $200k. I doubt the ARM processor in Ingenuity costs that much. >Do you really want to see that trend go beyond crappy cellphones designed to be thrown out every other year? I want cheaper rovers and probes, this is NASA's test for viability >with regard to the effects of radiation on electronic. You can test shit in the lab all day but eventually you have to test in the field. >Does Mars have some new kind of radiation that our highly controlled labs can't replicate? Do we know exactly the levels of radiation on the surface? >Of course not, it is a nonsensically wasteful way to test our understanding of radiation - at best. It's a live, in the field test of off-the-shelf components in space craft on a bonus mission unrelated to the main rover. What would be a sensically nonwasteful test of COSTS processors on Mars be? >the processor has no way of self diagnosing internal faults caused by ionizing radiation The helicopter flies and takes pictures. It's had 12 flights as of this comment. When it stops working, we'll know how long regular processors can last.