For many years Apple has boldly gone where no other tech company has gone before. Recent screenshots, captured from the live stream of Curiosity landing on Mars, show that their products have also made inroads into NASA. Images of the Entry, Descent and Landing Operations team at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California show several MacBook Pros in use by the staff. Close up shots reveal that they are running Mac OS X and being used for mission specific tasks.
The Curiosity rover also has technology inside it that is Apple-related. The chip that runs the on-board computer (actually two of them for redundancy purposes) is a version of the PowerPC processor that was used in the entire G3 line, from the Bondi Blue iMac to the iBook G3. The biggest change to the chip is making it radiation resistant in order to survive Mars’ harsh environment. This chip doesn’t have anywhere near the processing power of current Apple processors, in fact people have noted that the current iPhone is more powerful, but it has more than enough power to complete its tasks.
There has been a fair amount of debate as to the wisdom of spending 2.6 billion dollars to send a robot to Mars when there are pressing needs here at home. While I am an ardent supporter of NASA and I believe that money spent to learn more about the universe we live in is always money well spent, I can understand the argument on the other side. To make everyone happy, I propose that Apple spends its cash reserves, which is currently well over 100 billion dollars, to start its own space program. They might spend a little too much time making sure that the ship is as stylish as it is functional, but I think that they could get people to Mars and back before NASA does.