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Did the state of the art change much in 8 years? I am not sure we can use consumer electronics heuristics to determine the rate of progress at the high end. C
by jrockway 5y ago
Did the state of the art change much in 8 years? I am not sure we can use consumer electronics heuristics to determine the rate of progress at the high end. Consumer electronics has only one constraint: cost. Sony could sell you a gigapixel camera and a 200 core CPU to process the data today. Consumers can't afford that, though, so it's not a product. But at the high end -- humanity's only new space telescope -- the cost constraint is not as big of a problem, so the tech is going to be be better than what comes in a $100 phone.
Hubble is 30 years old using 1970s and 1980s tech and it's still a useful scientific instrument. Something with 2013 tech is going to be spectacularly useful in 2022.