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Realistic Starship Simulator (joke game)
Message
From
24/07/2019 00:27:17
Al Doman (Online)
M3 Enterprises Inc.
North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
 
 
To
23/07/2019 23:36:25
General information
Forum:
Humor
Category:
Technology
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01669682
Message ID:
01669688
Views:
22
>>>Several decades ago, I do remember seeing a joke program titled something like "Realistic Spaceflight Simulator". The introduction states how this program shows you a "realistic depiction" of actual spaceflight to nearby Alpha Centauri using currently-available technology -- in real time. When you press a key to begin the voyage, the screen changes to a starfield and a running time elapsed display. Being that the program was written in interpretive BASIC, you could easily look at the program code. Perhaps not surprising there isn't much to the program -- and is obvious that user was never meant to actually finish the game. I did find it amusing that examination of the loop code between "start" end "arrived" display, revealed that the loop would take on the order of several tens of thousands of years to complete.
>>
>>Should be updated for a 24 - 34 year time frame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
>
>This of course raises a question -- would there be a computer system that is capable to be running for the necessary amount of time (decades-long timespan) ?
>https://www.computerworld.com/article/3162416/booted-up-in-1993-this-server-still-runs-but-not-for-much-longer.html
>hrm... perhaps they do exist... I'm assuming that this computer system was running while being at least having some maintenance performed on it.
>
>Always did find it amusing how TV and movie computers seem to have incredibly long lifespans -- often on the order of centuries or even millennia. But it only takes a bit of illogic or contradiction to cause them to fail spectacularly in a shower of sparks. Of course, if such computers had some form of AI, I'd imagine they could "go a bit peculiar" like Holly in "Red Dwarf" simply go mad like Box in "Logan's Run"

The space industry is used to missions taking decades. New Horizons was launched in 2006, apparently it will have enough power to be operational until the 2030s. They don't use COTS hardware running Windows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Flight_computer
Regards. Al

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