Tuesday, April 12, 2011

30 years ago: an 8086 space

30 years ago, the first U.S. space shuttle go into space. This spacecraft was supposed to be reused many times, but problems have prevented the shuttle from achieving its original goals, with for example the inability to reuse the boosters. The shuttle interests us, because the early models - there were 10 years between the first flight of Columbia and the Atlantis, the most recent - used 8086 processors from Intel in some adjuncts.

In 2002, NASA's search for parts over the Internet through eBay or "Yahoo! sell" because spare parts were missing and that manufacturers could not provide versions completely identical to those used during the first shuttle flights . Obviously, to avoid bugs and problems, NASA prefers to use 8086 processors of the early '80s that releases later versions.

The parts were intended for Discovery, the shuttle has flown for the last couple of weeks ago.

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