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Our computers are a thousand times faster but our steel isn't a thousand times stronger and our rocket fuel doesn't have a thousand times the specific impulse.
by Causality1 7y ago
Our computers are a thousand times faster but our steel isn't a thousand times stronger and our rocket fuel doesn't have a thousand times the specific impulse. As far as cost and ultimate physical mission limitations go, we're very much still living in the same neighborhood as 1970.
- foxhop 7y agoYup, and we are still violently blowing up a controlled bomb to exit the earths gravity.
- thowaway9883 7y agoAdvances in ground computers do not translate to space computers. Most space-qualified processors are still on the order of tens to hundreds of MHz. I currently work on a space science satellite launched in 2015 for NASA and our flight processor is 40 MHz. https://www.geek.com/chips/nasas-orion-spacecraft-runs-on-a-12-year-old-single-core-processor-from-the-ibook-g3-1611132/ https://www.geek.com/chips/nasas-orion-spacecraft-runs-on-a-...
- moftz 7y agoCurrent space-rated FPGAs are like 10-15 years out of date compared to what the newest stuff can do. People are starting to take more risk with launching commercial parts in LEO but no one is seriously going to rely on anything but Level 1 parts for expensive, long-term missions.