Yes, you are correct. Still, crash landing implies it landed, not blew up in the atmosphere.

But I guess “non controlled descent” is a much better way of putting it.

Yes, the eclipse was quite a publicized event. Thank you for the comment.

Actually it’s 1 MB of RAM not 1 GB, which is 1024 times less. 😛 If you get rid of all the fancy graphics and have only a text-based user interface, then you can easily fit with only 1 MB, even for large tasks such as running a space shuttle. In fact, I’ve written many programs that only use a few KB of RAM, which is a small fraction of the 1 MB the space shuttle has. (I am studying computer science in college.)

Get rid of fancy graphics, and applications and see what power you need ? Not much…

Hollywood and Video Games and Design Applications – that where all the cpu development is needed.

And we dont even need so much more power to what we are offered.

More power – less code optimization.

Not so much better graphics today requires gazillions of CPU and memory more….

So, all of that fancy schmancy high speed silicon you have in your gaming PC is more likely to be turned into worthless Swiss cheese by sub atomic particles traveling near the speed of light than an old, but reliable set of circuits with a large per-transistor footprint on a wafer.

Think of it this way, placing an Intel Core i7 at 3.3GHz and 16 GB of RAM in space is the same as placing a Ferrari in a monster truck rally.

A teacher once told us the golden rule for his class was KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!). Sounds like KISS applies in this case. I’d heard of this before–I think the computer simply controls the thrusters on re-entry. There is probably more risk in upgrading it than not.

I believe you’re right in some sense, but other times, having to save a few cpu cycles or memory access means jumping through various hoops, and in the end this can result in complex code.