> The space shuttle used a hardened 386 (or something similar) that cost a bazillion dollars. Their main computers were a custom variant of the IBM 360 mainfra

> The space shuttle used a hardened 386 (or something similar) that cost a bazillion dollars. Their main computers were a custom variant of the IBM 360 mainframe. They also duplicated it 5x: 4x with majority vote for error correction, plus a backup running separately-developed software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/4_Pi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/4_Pi > The drone currently on Mars used commidity off the shelf chips (snapdragon IIRC). The harsh conditions thing is not something to laugh at, but I also think we might have over-engineered somethings a bit. It should be noted that drone is 1) an engineering experiment and 2) no one will die if it malfunctions, so they can afford to be a bit sloppier.