Was looking through Opportunity's Wikipedia page, and found this cool comparison of the embedded systems used in Mars rovers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_embedded_compute... That lead me to the RAD6000 page, which was new to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RAD6000 "Reported to have a unit cost somewhere between US$200,000 and US$300,000, RAD6000 computers were released for sale in the general co…
1) The yield rates for spaceflight-qualified chips is very, very low. Like 1%-5% or so. The chips are inspected when they come out of fab, and only the most perfect ones are given a spaceflight certification. The rest of the chips are used for other, less stringent applications (test boards, or military/embedded applications).
2) Spaceflight parts have significant paper trails. For metal parts, they are traced from the moment a lot of material comes out of the mill, and every time it is touched or changes hands thereafter that fact is recorded. Same thing with chips. Every chip has a "traveler" associated with it that records when it was manufactured, how it was stored, etc. Keeping those records costs a surprising amount of money. Handling the parts so the paper trail can be kept costs even more. You have to organize your logistics train such that every part is individually trackable. That reduces efficiency and adds cost.
3) Relatively low economies of scale.
