Rugged Laptop at high altitude

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?

Though I like mechanical things it's best to stay away from
parts that move and spin. So a solid-state hard drive. It's
ok to stretch the specifications some percentage as the
technology will advance while this is still in review.

Oh, with military think security. Add incription to the memory
and an RFID chip to the users dog tags. Between the tag
and the usual ID/password cargo data should be secure.

Watch how cooling is also effected. Cold yes but low moisture
and low density.

The tech should move to voice/data-glove input with voice/
heads-up output.

Chris wrote:
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.

Do you really need a laptop?
Anyway, it'd seem to be trivial to connect a USB hard drive to it.
Stick a 500G hard drive in a sealed box, and connect three airtight
feedthroughs, for the USB signals.

Is the whole aircraft depressurised?

Could you not run a computer in a pressurised environment - perhaps
even in a box, and use a wifi or blue tooth connected external device,
like a PDA for data entry / capture?

SSD drives that may be suitable can be found he
http://www.bitmicro.com/index.php

40 GB will cost you about $16000
The price however, is proportional to storage capacity so if you can do
with say 20 GB, the cost is cut in half.



"Chris" wrote in message
oups.com...
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?