The Commodore 64 was never a robust enough system for military use. It was designed to be inexpensive and easy to work with, which is the opposite of military-grade. The military version would have to be in a titanium case, and the switch for just the letter 'A' key would cost more than the entire keyboard on the C-64.
This is not meant as a criticism of Mil-Spec or the C-64. Both have their purposes, and both fulfill(ed) them quite well.
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This reeks of being an urban legend.
The Commodore 64 was never a robust enough system for military use. It was designed to be inexpensive and easy to work with, which is the opposite of military-grade. The military version would have to be in a titanium case, and the switch for just the letter 'A' key would cost more than the entire keyboard on the C-64.
This is not meant as a criticism of Mil-Spec or the C-64. Both have their purposes, and both fulfill(ed) them quite well.
If you give space travel all to the private sector, there would be no scientific vision. We would have even more of the current problem, which is:
When man first went out into space it was to look out further into the universe. Nowadays, we only go far enough up to look back down at Earth.
Translation:
Business needs satellites for communications and earth telemetry. That's really all they want to send rockets up to deliver.
It's important for the scientists to have say in how space technology is developed, not just the beancounters.