[Porsche-O-Phile]

Given how much current-day computer technology is wasted on stupid and meaningless crap like "social networking" and ads I doubt that citing advances in computing technology is any way to really convince people that we ought to proceed with further development right now via the space program.

Also keep in mind that most computer technology used at NASA (at least the stuff used on manned & unmanned space vessels and aircraft) is pretty primitive - they're made to be robust, redundant and reliable - and power/weight efficient. Having oodles of processing power is seldom a concern.

It's possible to do lots of stuff with 286/386 processor technology - it all comes down to how efficiently the software is written to be and let's face it - most of the stuff written today for commercial use is very bloated, dependent on ever-increasing amounts of memory and power and saddled with unnecessary crap. NASA's stuff is very minimalist and streamlined so they can "do more with less". And yes, I do know this for a fact.