The radiation effects community has a long history of publishing SEE test results through IEEE NSREC Data Workshop papers, the NASA’s Radiation Data Base, ESA’s RADHARD database, and various other repositories. But in practice, a huge volume of test data sits behind corporate firewalls, locked in internal reports that will never see daylight.
There are legitimate reasons for this — ITAR/EAR restrictions on certain applications, competitive concerns, and the cost of testing that companies understandably want to protect as proprietary IP.
But there are also real costs to the community:
Duplicated effort. Multiple organizations independently test the same commercial part because nobody knows the others have already characterized it. At $1-5k per beam hour, this adds up fast across the industry.
Incomplete pictures. Published data often covers one lot and one test condition. Lot-to-lot variability, temperature dependence, and bias sensitivity are rarely characterized because the original tester only needed their specific use case.
Heritage gaps. New space companies entering the market often can’t access the decades of institutional knowledge that established players take for granted. The published literature covers a fraction of what’s been tested.
Some questions for discussion: What’s the right balance between openness and IP protection? Would a community-funded testing program (like what JEDEC does for reliability) work for radiation? Are there models from other engineering disciplines we should look at?