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An Astronaut's View of Space Station Tech
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a chat with a NASA astronaut about how they fix system outages on board the International Space Station, what kind of computing tech they use on board, and how he would like to see the iPad used on the ISS." He talks about using 5 year old laptops because they had been tested to handle the stresses of space travel, as well as the importance of being able to read emails and send pictures to family while aboard a space station for months at a time.
"It is well know that general purpose computers cannot be used for any purpose that generally needs computing."
Well, see, any idiot who knows some math (astronauts, maybe?) can get a free compiler for any x86 operating system.
But with the iPad, our tax dollars will actually be going to Apple just for the privilege of using their IDE.
Of course, everyone knows you get what you pay for, and programming an iPad with a proprietary and difficult toolchain will automatically yield better results than a free one that loads of people have been using for ages to program x86 general-purpose PCs.
By the way, the iOS SDK has to run on OS X... Are they going to bring Macbook Pros up to the ISS just to load programs onto the iPads? As opposed to... using the laptops themselves? Which is what they're already doing.
Or use a network connection and somehow buy their own programs (developed on OS X, on Earth) through Apple's store, which would make it impossible to field-test the programs, and bring in extra cost, and be stupid.