About This Particular Macintosh 6.04 - eDisk

During the intervening 25 years, processor power and hardware sophistication haveincreased exponentially. Although the software has so far performed admirably, NASA officialshave begun looking for something equally as powerful as we start to enter a new millennium.Yup, according to rumors, NASA is going Apple.Let me begin by telling you how I came by this information. One of my good friends frommy college days is an employee with the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. His duties at JPLinvolve the ground guidance package of the Hubble Space Telescope. We have kept in touchsince graduation, and, every so often, I give him a call just to make sure the telescope hasn’tcrashed or anything strange like that.The last time I called him, though, he seemed pretty excited about something. Now, I’m notthe type who likes to call California to talk work, but I had to ask just what the heck wasgoing on. He wasn’t quite sure, but he thought he overheard some folks in their softwaredivision talking about a major overhaul for the space shuttle fleet which involved AppleComputer.Recognizing an opportunity to get the story which could lead to a paid position with a computerindustry magazine, I began to make a number of phone calls. The Public InformationDepartment at JPL didn’t know much about this, but I wasn’t one to be easily deterred. Mynext calls to NASA initially didn’t pan out; however, once I was forwarded to the ShuttleOperations Division, things started to become pretty apparent.Due to the Federal Government tightening the budget on space exploration, NASA officialsare going to have to economize. New reusable spacecraft system programs on the drawingboard are being put on hold, so NASA is going to have to get more mileage out of the existingfleet.To that end, there is going to be an extensive overhaul program. Long-time problem components,such as fuel flow valves (recently helped in aborting their fair share of launchattempts) are going to be replaced with new, efficient components which should drasticallyreduce the number of aborted launch attempts. This will also save money, as it costs millionsof dollars each time a mission is scrubbed late into the countdown.ATPM 6.04 ← 16 →Columns: Deep Space Mac