COTS stands for "commercial off-the-shelf" products. This is when an organization, typically a government one or a large company, buys commercially available hardware or software instead of having the stuff custom made. The idea is that it can save money.
A problem can crop up when, for one reason or another, that COTS product gets written into a detailed specification for another device or system. By the time the thing makes it to the point where it is ready to go into serial production, the manufacturer of one of the commercially available components may have changed its design. So if Felis, inc. has changed the design of its component by then, either that change has to be certified or whoever is making/using the device or system has to contract with Felis, inc. to produce a run of the older component.
In which case the COTS component is no longer an off-the-shelf component. So in that regard, using COTS components may be a false economy.
RobertaX has observed that there is a company that is offering space-rated connectors for sale. She wonders where is the market for such products that would justify large-scale production.
Good question.
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From a manufacturing engineer, I'll tell you how this works:
ReplyDelete1) Buyer X (probably a CubeSAT builder) wants a connector that'll work in outer space.
2) Buyer X contacts Amphenol to ask, "do you have anything space-rated? I need a connector Z."
3) Amphenol sticks one of their COTS milspec connectors (used for a lot more than military applications nowadays, pretty much anything that is mission critical uses one of these things, and they're already rated for the temperatures of space)into a vacuum chamber to see what happens. Nothing happens -- no outgassing, no nothing. Exactly as you'd want to happen.
4) Amphenol sends out the connector to a commercial testing lab to be irradiated with radiation that simulates solar radiation. The connector comes back and tests fine.
5) Amphenol sticks a "space rated" label on the thing, and sells it to the CubeSAT builder for a higher price than the milspec version, even though it *is* the milspec version.
6) Success!
That's how these things go. "Space rated" is sort of a fuzzy word anyhow, but outgassing, radiation resistance, and temperature range are the three things they're most concerned about, and milspec already covers two of those to a certain extent (radiation resistance and temperature range).
- Badtux the Manufacturing Penguin