The 30-Year-Old Space Shuttle Flies On 1 MB of RAM, But At Least "There's No Blue Screen"

The best circuitous apparatus anytime congenital is “truly a arresting allotment of hardware.” Above: a shuttle bout promo video for the fresh IMAX blur Hubble 3D

Watching astronauts adjustment one of the best circuitous machines anytime congenital while aerial 300 afar aloft the Earth in the fresh IMAX blur Hubble 3D may be a ‘religious experience’. But the agent they took to get up there can sometimes feel as baby and broken-down as an old 18-wheeler.

The soon-to-be-retired Amplitude Shuttle is 30 years old and appreciably relies on an on-board flight computer abundant beneath adult than the buzz you’re account this on: yup, the craft’s General Purpose Computer uses aloof one MB of RAM. It affectionate of puts your anamnesis problems into perspective, now doesn’t it?

The shuttle’s assurance additionally goes to appearance how abundant bodies can do alike with old tools, provided they’re reliable. The crumbling address – conceivably the best circuitous apparatus anytime congenital – is “truly a arresting allotment of hardware,” astronaut (and bygone IMAX cameraman) Scott Altman told Motherboard at a contempo accession for the film, area he was cutting his dejected flight clothing while bamboozlement a bottle of gold-colored aqueous and a mini hamburger.

Besides the actuality that the computer aloof works, there’s at atomic one account of relying on a apparatus slower than a 386 with a purpose-built operating system: “You never get that dejected awning of death!”

You Alone Get One Adventitious to Land

Still, as arresting and bug-free as the Shuttle is, Altman additionally reminded us that the affair is “not absolutely the best glider.” As the Shuttle’s pilot on its acknowledgment to Earth (and the guy who absolutely flew Tom Cruise’s alike in Top Gun), he knows able-bodied why the Shuttle is sometimes referred to as a aerial brick. (Wonderfully, Altman and added pilots convenance their power-less landings on a adapted business jet.)

“When you’re landing on a carrier, you can arrest and appear about for addition pass,” says Altman. “With the shuttle, you alone get one adventitious to land.”

In this promotional video, Altman’s aide on the Hubble Atlantis mission, the affable Mike Massimino, gives a little bout of the orbiter (as the alike is known; back it’s accumulated with its solid rocket boosters and ammunition tank, it’s a Shuttle Transportation System, or STS). It’s not aloof a claiming to get it bottomward safely: if you’re blame the acme absolute of 6’4", as both of these astronauts are, it can additionally be a bit adamantine to get around, abnormally if you’re floating. Don’t alike ask about the toilet.

But peeing in amplitude is apparently annihilation compared to the amplitude walks that astronauts took on STS-125 to fix the Hubble aftermost year, the mission accurate in the fresh 3D film. The telescope – attempt for a admirable absolute of 8 account with a customized IMAX 3D camera installed in the Shuttle’s burden bay – will itself retire in 2014, back the James Webb Amplitude Telescope will be launched.

See a diagram of the Shuttle below, as able-bodied as a abounding admeasurement diagram. And see a video bout of the International Amplitude Station here.

article rewrite from: http://www.motherboard.tv/2010/3/23/the-30-year-old-space-shuttle-flies-on-1-mb-of-ram-but-at-least-there-s-no-blue-screen--2