At times like this, I'm reminded of the Mars Curiosity's tech specs which are something like 200MHz, 256MB of RAM, 2GB hd,and 2MP camera and all the posts about how my iPhone is so much better. Well it was good enough to get to Mars and a hell of a lot more reliable.
Some of the research rovers we built before Sojourner had 8-bit processors with 2k EEPROM and 256 bytes of RAM. Back then there were people who thought we were crazy for thinking that some day we would be able to fly with the same 8MB of RAM that was in our MacII development machines.
At times like this, I'm reminded of the nuclear power plants of the world and their automation based on punched cards.
When speaking about systems, which need maximal reliability and are strictly controlled by authorities (air planes, nuclear power plants, medical treatment devices, space related stuff), updating existing and once approved systems is so painful, that you often do all you can to avoid it. That's a sad state of affairs.
