I assume you're aware, but for the general audience: Every bit of memory on space shuttles was an individual physical bead stored in a hand-woven wire grid, wit

I assume you're aware, but for the general audience: Every bit of memory on space shuttles was an individual physical bead stored in a hand-woven wire grid, with memory contents stored as magnetic orientation. This style of storage was the only available at the time, but continued through the 80's for robustness. No power to maintain memory, and practically immune to bit-flips caused by cosmic radiation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_core_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_core_memory The article states that the price of a single bit varied from $1 to $0.01 USD over the product lifetime. I would assume that NASA paid extra for higher reliability. 17 cents for a single bit is well within the cost range of a single bit, and a reasonable estimate for that time period. ... jesus tap-dancing christ, a whole dollar for a single BIT? Wolfram|Alpha says that a dollar in 1955 would be worth almost $9 today. The memory in my desktop would be worth more than the GDP of all but 10 US states o_0