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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>>…</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Dan<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] Why space tech isn't cutting edge<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Why is this news? I thought it was widely known that electronics on space missions is always several years behind what's being done elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Regards,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'>Dan</span><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>>…No, this is a common misconception. The space industry isn’t necessarily *<b>behind</b>* exactly, for if we argue that it is behind, it would imply that we are trying to get 2002-era processors to work in space, but that isn’t the direction. We still use early 90s processors, and work instead the software. The feature size of microprocessors shrunk steadily, resulting in vast increases in speed, but it also made the processors more vulnerable to space radiation. Furthermore, we ended up with all this speed, and what did we do with it? Back in 1990, it took about half a minute to boot up a computer. Now, with processors that are a thousand times faster, it only takes about half a minute to boot up a computer. Why isn’t it 30 milliseconds? Why is it that you can go into your control panel, look at system processes and see that your microprocessor is doing basically nothing, maybe 1 to 2 percent utilization, yet it doesn’t really feel much faster than it did twenty years ago? With a thousand-fold increase in speed of processors and a vast increase in memory bus speed, why is it that computers got so junked up with all those mysterious processes running alongside what you really need, and even now they STILL crash occasionally, so that it feels like we made almost no progress at all?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Space flight software is stripped down and optimized to where it does exactly what you need and only what you need, it isn’t susceptible to viruses, it is reliable as an anvil (because the astronauts’ lives depend on it), it has had every line of code tested under every possible input and when all that expensive testing is done, you have a damn good product. In that sense, the space industry isn’t behind their commercial counterparts, it is ahead. Of course you can’t play angry birds up there, and instead of tweeting to your fellow astronauts, you might need to just talk to them using your vocal cords, so in that sense they are behind.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div></div></body></html>