From Earth to Orbit: An assessment of transportation options

The report assesses the requirements, benefits, technological feasibility, and roles of Earth-to-Orbit transportation systems and options that could be developed in support of future national space programs. Transportation requirements, including those for Mission-to-Planet Earth, Space Station Freedom assembly and operation, human exploration of space, space science missions, and other major civil space missions are examined. These requirements are compared with existing, planned, and potential launch capabilities, including expendable launch vehicles (ELV's), the Space Shuttle, the National Launch System (NLS), and new launch options. In addition, the report examines propulsion systems in the context of various launch vehicles. These include the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor (ASRM), the Redesigned Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM), the Solid Rocket Motor Upgrade (SRMU), the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), the Space Transportation Main Engine (STME), existing expendable launch vehicle engines, and liquid-oxygen/hydrocarbon engines. Consideration is given to systems that have been proposed to accomplish the national interests in relatively cost effective ways, with the recognition that safety and reliability contribute to cost-effectiveness. Related resources, including technology, propulsion test facilities, and manufacturing capabilities are also discussed

Thorough Static Analysis of Device Drivers

Bugs in kernel-level device drivers cause 85% of the system crashes in the Windows XP operating system [44]. One of the sources of these errors is the complexity of the Windows driver API itself: programmers must master a complex set of rules about how to use the driver API in order to create drivers that are good clients of the kernel. We have built a static analysis engine that finds API usage errors in C programs. The Static Driver Verifier tool (SDV) uses this engine to find kernel API usage errors in a driver. SDV includes models of the OS and the environment of the device driver, and over sixty API usage rules. SDV is intended to be used by driver developers "out of the box." Thus, it has stringent requirements: (1) complete automation with no input from the user; (2) a low rate of false errors. We discuss the techniques used in SDV to meet these requirements, and empirical results from running SDV on over one hundred Windows device drivers