That's a very big, and common misconception.
NASA and the DoD have equipment that may be considered "high tech", but that equipment, while very expensive, uses electronic part that are, in general, 3 years old at the youngest. Why would that be? Two reasons: 1) neither the DoD or NASA can leave well enough alone, they have to "improve" the parts with extra requirements above and beyond that used by the commercial version; and 2) It takes about 3 years or so for a piece of equipment to go from development to production - and the design is initiated with the parts that are available at the beginning of the development, so production equipment uses at least 3 year old parts.
Commercial equipment comes to market with parts that are about a half a year old, purely due to the pressures of competition. The newest commercial technology is ALWAYS much advanced over the DoD and NASA's technology, ALWAYS!
What the DoD and NASA brings to the party is innovative use of old technology. And we need that, even though it is expensive and not as up-to-date as we would like it to be. |
