Space Forum / Space Flight / April 2006

I have been looking for a rugged laptop that will work at 30,000ft
without much luck.  It seems that MIL-STD-810F only requires hardware
to be tested at 15,000ft while operating (I think this increases to
40,000ft if the hardware is turned off and stored).  From what I've
read this 15,000ft ceiling is the limit for cabin altitude for the
cargo bay of military aircraft.  The laptop operator will be, on
occasion, required to use the laptop while sitting in the cargo bay of
an aircraft (without cargo as you would traditionally think of it) and
flying at altitudes up to 30,000ft.

He will be wearing gloves and an oxygen mask and probably won't want to
use a laptop at all, but this is currently a project requirement.

I know one of the hurdles to overcome is with traditional hard drives
failing due to the heads falling into the platters in this thin air.
I've been looking at "true" hermetically sealed hard disks, but I
haven't found one for a laptop.  I also haven't reasearched solid state
drives thouroughly enough to see if I can get at least a 40GB disk in a
laptop without killing our hardware budget.

I was thinking maybe a small solid state hard drive in a rugged laptop
for booting and minimal data storage with a separate box of raided
hermetically sealed hard disks for the bulk of the data....but before I
kludge something together I thought I'd get some opinions.

Anyone know of a rugged laptop that could work as is at 30,000FT?
Anyone have a better idea on how to approach the problem?