One statement that stood out to me was Chris Lewicki's dig at NASA's "twenty year old computer" running Curiosity, with Lewicki adding the usual jab about his iPhone having more processing power.<p>The RAD750 is based on a 1996-era PowerPC design, so the statement is technically true, but as far as I know it's basically the state-of-the-art in rad-hardened processors -- it's the same processor used in Boeing's 787 FMC, for example. (SST did just ship a rad-hard M0, which is kind of neat.)<p>Lewicki's not just talking off-the-cuff here -- he's one of a few people actually qualified to opine on spacecraft engineering -- but I wonder, what does he think should be used in place of the hugely-expensive, arguably-antiquated but undoubtedly robust systems currently in use?
The most surprising single fact from this article, in my opinion, was to learn that Queen's Brian May is an astrophysicist! That fact alone distracted me slightly while reading the rest, which I also found to be interesting.