Well, the Space Shuttle is one of the main reasons. It can't go to the Moon, and NASA billed it as the ultimate wonder ship, the future of space travel. So, they can't really go back to capsules. Nothing as heavy and general-purpose as the Space Shuttle can make it to the moon in a reasonable amount of time without costing an arm and a leg. Maybe if we had something like a NERVA engine, but we don't.
Let's see... [slashdot math] That would require replacing all the IDE drives over 300 times! Also, it's too bad there's only one, because otherwise we could, y'know, build a... Oh, nevermind.
Well, Gateway doesn't need a supercomputer. And really, no one else is going to pay then for 14 teraflops. Most of the people who need that kind of power can get it elsewhere (Especially if projects like the one a few weeks back to network machines at Canada's universities for a day become more common). This is for people who occasionally need some really serious (supercomputer-class but not world-class) computing power, but don't need it often enough to find another solution. And as I recall, they have T1 lines to all the stores, which should provide enough bandwidth for that kind of use.
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Well, the Space Shuttle is one of the main reasons. It can't go to the Moon, and NASA billed it as the ultimate wonder ship, the future of space travel. So, they can't really go back to capsules. Nothing as heavy and general-purpose as the Space Shuttle can make it to the moon in a reasonable amount of time without costing an arm and a leg. Maybe if we had something like a NERVA engine, but we don't.
Let's see... [slashdot math] That would require replacing all the IDE drives over 300 times! Also, it's too bad there's only one, because otherwise we could, y'know, build a... Oh, nevermind.
Well, Gateway doesn't need a supercomputer. And really, no one else is going to pay then for 14 teraflops. Most of the people who need that kind of power can get it elsewhere (Especially if projects like the one a few weeks back to network machines at Canada's universities for a day become more common). This is for people who occasionally need some really serious (supercomputer-class but not world-class) computing power, but don't need it often enough to find another solution. And as I recall, they have T1 lines to all the stores, which should provide enough bandwidth for that kind of use.