🚀 go-pugleaf

In <DIDr9y.F2J@info.uucp> burl4300@mach1.wlu.ca (Jean-Paul Burlock u)
writes: 
>
>Timothy P. Kelley (tkelley@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
>: On Mon, 20 Nov 1995 03:35:26 GMT, md@mindspring.com (Mike Donnellan)
wrote:
>: 
>: >noah@indirect.com (Noah Monsey) wrote:
>: 
>: >>> I wonder if there are any ongoing military projects which were
designed using
>: >>> 486, 386 or even 286 processors? 
>: 
>: >Dunno if it's strictly military by your standards, but the space 
>: >station  specs reportedly include 386SX-based computers to support
>: >many functions, according to a recent article in IEEE Spectrum (I 
>: >believe it was, at any rate if my memory isn't failing any more
than 
>: >usual; magazine already thrown out).  See the issue featuring 
>: >"megaprojects."
>: 
>: OK everybody - we're going to sell all our 386sx and dx chips and
>: motherboards to the army and NASA for millions.
>: Why didn't I think of this sooner?
>: 
>
>Well, NASA went to the moon with a computer that was the equivalent of
a 
>Commodore 64.  ANd I have heard that the space shuttle has not been 
>upgraded very far past early 80's computers either... They prefer to
have 
>an old, slow reliable system, instead of a new, fast one that crashes.
>
>Which makes me wonder...
>
>	How would the Pentium's famous floating point bug affect the 
>fight of the space shuttle? :-)   
>
>				J.P.
>
Something else about the low-tech stuff NASA built into the station
designs...remember that original plans were to have the damn thing up
and in orbit by now.  Faced with an on again, off again Congressional
budgeting process (not to mention politicians who stay up into the wee
hours of the morning looking for excuses to cut their budget), NASA has
had no choice but to go with the original design.  To reopen the
computer project, redesign the power systems, locations and space,
cooling, etc...would require a lot of money...that would cause Congress
to go nuts about "budget overruns".  Low-tech and cheap wins the day on
capitol hill.