> I disagree with you about the shuttle being a piece of junk. even I am not
> familiar with NASA development at all.
> I think (and you can of course correct me if I am wrong) most of the
shuttle
> is *REAL* hi-tech even for the upcoming years.
>
> But again, I'm not an expert in the space/aeronautic field.
> Tal

I was wrong. They don't use 8086 286 or 386 CPU's. They
didn't exist when the shuttle was being built. The shuttle uses
5 IBM AP101S computers. They were upgraded from the
AP101B's in 1991.

AP101S(new)    256k x 32 bit    1.2MIPs      20,000MTBF designed 1982
AP101B(old)      104k x 32 bit    0.4MIPs        5,200MTBF Designed 1968

MTBF=Mean Time Between Failures.

NASA web based shuttle reference.
http://spaceflight.sc.wip.psiweb.com/shuttle/reference/shutref/verboseindex.
html

Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/computers/Compspace.html

The website is really slow right now.

-Frank

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