Certainly something different than the daily "my framework foobar is the next successor to angular"-kind of posts. I'm actually happy for a bit of... rather unusual content.
As for the article: it's a pity. The US could fly to the moon with less computer power than a dumbphone, put people in things like the SR71 (how did they actually put enough processing power for all the flight computers in a plane back then?!)... and now?
Space Shuttle's been retired, no near-time replacement. No SR71 (or anything that can be seen as a replacement), and stupid Republican teabaggers caring more about their pockets instead of the population. Seriously, America what's wrong with you?
We Germans needed the Marshall plan after WW2, maybe it's needed the other way round this time...
Oddly, I think it's a side effect of the way that technology works. When we humans want to do something we find a way and usually it is extreme and capital intensive. Afterward, we find more economical and less extreme ways of doing it.
The Colosseum in Rome still exists because the only way to do it was to do it in stone and stone lasts forever. Since then we've built millions of arenas that won't last as long because we've used economic forces to develop just-good-enough structure. Likewise, the SR-71 has been replaced by the just-good-enough surveillance satellite.
There's another aspect too. Sometimes we do things just to see that we can. Going to the moon is in that category. If there was a compelling reason to go back we would've. The Concorde, one could argue, was in the same category - we had to have the thrill of taking commercial flight into the supersonic realm, but we found that they economics were such that the thrill of going supersonic and getting there a few hours earlier were not enough to support a market.
The SR-71 was a hack, where the goal was to use 1960s technology to make an areal camera platform that could photograph targets protected by SAMs.
The original design brief was that it should be a stealth U2, but as the A-12/SR-71 project developed it became clear that that wasn't possible with the technology of the time, but that they could make a platform that flew so fast the SAMs wouldn't have time to lock, launch, and intercept.
The problem was that the cost of the keyhole program was incredible, you needed a whole launch platform plus a whole recovery mission every time you wanted to take a picture. So the SR-71 was a cost-saving measure versus Keyhole.
Currently the us military can get the information that the SR-71 could provide more easily and with less danger and cost.
> The SR-71 has been replaced by the just-good-enough surveillance satellite.
Given that the primary motivation for the SR-71 (and, before it, the A-12) was to have a platform wasn't vulnerable to interception like the U-2, I think satellites aren't merely "just good enough", they are far better in that key respect.
They might be worse at "be where we want on demand", but if that's the overriding concern, there's all kinds of other platforms (drones, U-2). The problem with the SR-71 is that it is highly optimized for survivability through speed, but the speed it has doesn't do enough for survivability to be worth the cost given the other alternatives available.
> There's another aspect too. Sometimes we do things just to see that we can. Going to the moon is in the category.
Well, if you ignore the Cold War geopolitical context of the space race, sure, going to the moon was "just to see that we can".
The Colosseum (and much Roman construction) was built with stone but also concrete. The composition of Roman concrete is such that it's much more durable than most modern concrete, due in part to material properties not well understood until recently.
There's also a survivor bias built into structures which have survived the test of time: by definition, what's lasted are the structures which have lasted.
> Certainly something different than the daily "my framework foobar is the next successor to angular"-kind of posts. I'm actually happy for a bit of... rather unusual content.
I'm often extremely critical of off-topic political content, but think that "unusual" content that highlights some interesting bit of the world is great! It definitely fits "intellectually gratifying" far more than politics, or the latest "outrage story".
I'm happy to read well-written articles about things that are new and interesting to me.
A plane doesn't need flight computers, it just needs control systems that react to inputs. These kinds of systems can be totally mechanical, totally digital, or a mixture of both. In the 60's, many of these systems would have been mechanical, with the digital circuitry operating at a higher level to provide the pilots with operational control.
You also have to remember that many of the cycles on a modern desktop are wasted, dealing with the gui, and lots of abstraction layers. Most embedded control systems are much simpler, and are closer to the baremetal, so they don't need GHz of computing power.
Too bad that thing is unmanned. For sure, it massively reduces the complexity (no life support, no need for high-temperature-stable glass, more agility in flight due to much higher g-force tolerances)... but just imagine flying it!
As for the article: it's a pity. The US could fly to the moon with less computer power than a dumbphone, put people in things like the SR71 (how did they actually put enough processing power for all the flight computers in a plane back then?!)... and now?
Space Shuttle's been retired, no near-time replacement. No SR71 (or anything that can be seen as a replacement), and stupid Republican teabaggers caring more about their pockets instead of the population. Seriously, America what's wrong with you?
We Germans needed the Marshall plan after WW2, maybe it's needed the other way round this time...