Moore’s Law Made Manifest, in 2 acts:
1) Perseverance Cameras: “Video or it didn’t happen.” NASA knows that now. 😉 The one must-watch minute: https://youtu.be/4czjS9h4Fpg?t=138 It’s pretty amazing what a few turns of Moore’s Law can do for COTS camera imagers and electronics. Our prior rover, Curiosity, has a 2MP camera… because it was a 2004 design freeze, and 2MP was SOTA then.
2) Russian Mars Program: It ended with a Phobos-Grunt, not a whimper. And 20 attempts. The Soviets lost the space race, IMHO, because they were behind on compute. The Apollo program, in contrast, consumed 50% of global semiconductor output at its peak. Rendezvous and finesse belonged to the U.S. Russia just had heavy lift. Taking that a bit further, in an alternative history: https://youtu.be/8HZ4DnVfWYQ?t=229
Leave a Reply