Comment by EvanAnderson
14 days ago
I don't know why people are surprised by this. Using suitable off-the-shelf solutions for non-mission-critical purposes seems like a very reasonable thing to do.
I'm recalling this from my memory of "The Space Above Us" podcast: There were various bespoke teleprinters sent up on early shuttle flights that had exciting failure modes (if I remember correctly one of them started smoking) and in at least a couple of cases they had to stow the new hardware and pull out the old backup hardware because the new stuff didn't work.
Related thread from 2023 about the US Navy using Xbox 360 controllers instead of custom built hardware.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36408604
Xbox 360 controller: Good times! US Navy approved.
Madcatz controller: Bad times! OceanGate approved.
Having had the unfortunate experience of using MadCatz controllers, I would doubt the sanity of anyone that selected one
OceanGate was Logitech not MadCatz
2 replies →
I’m surprised they went with outlook rather than something like thunderbird. And I’m surprised they are burning power on an os that can run outlook.
NASA is a large government organization. Microsoft Outlook is understandable. I assumed they were reading their normal email.
Laptop uses negligible power. The solar panels generate eight houses worth of power (they don't give number).
A Macbook Neo can run outlook just fine and pulls what, 20 watts?
I would be fascinated to see the actual measured power consumption at baseline and when it's actually running Outlook
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