When NASA cannot fix it, they have to call a car scientist. And that is all so very true. My educated guess is most NASA engineers cannot fix their own cars. Why do I think that? Because when NASA cannot fix something at NASA they do in fact call upon car scientists. How’s that for a service call, I wonder if NASA has AAA towing?
Cars had indoor pluming and heating and electricity in the late 1890s, that is about thirty to fifty years before most people had that luxury in their homes. In the 1920s a luxury in most homes was a wood stove. Even today most car technologies are still twenty to thirty years ahead of the rest of the world. My computer has over two hundred processors in it to diagnose car problems, most twenty year old cars have seven or more processors in a eight inch by ten inch metal box controlling your car’s engine along with many other modules and processors all wired and talking to another 30+ sensors and 30+ actuators on board just to run the engine.
Now add the computer for the anti-lock brake system and the computer for the air bag system and the computer to aim the head lights around corners the computer for the heating and air-conditioning system and the computer for the satellite communication and voice recognition system a computer for the suspension and ride control and nitrogen tire pressure and the computer for the remote start and the computer for security and the Body computer and forty miles of wire to monitor all on-board computers.
My 1984 Buick has a fiber-optic communication system. As simple as it is, all it does is tell the driver if any of the running lights are not working. When Hewlett-Packard comes out with something new, it is probably something they bought from General Motors and was in a Cadillac or Buick years ago. When I was going to school at the G.M. training center in 1977 in Burbank, California, we were learning about a satellite communication system that would have been on a 1978 or later Cadillac and maybe on a Buick. But the U.S. Government said no way. I guess the U.S. Military did not want Russia or China buying a new Cadillac and having better technology than our own Military. Here we are thirty or so years later and now you can have it in your car today.
It is always the Government that holds back science and technology. Your home computer has one processor in it and is very slow compared to the computers in your car. The oldest car I have worked on with an on-board computer was built in 1967, two years before we landed on the Moon. The computers that would have put man on the Moon failed and the Astronauts would have died — thank goodness the Astronauts were smarter than the computers.
There are at lest seven different kinds of pluming on most cars, with computers wired to all of them and the same goes for the dozens of electrical systems ranging from a milli-volt to 48,000 volts and everything in between. Most people cannot fix a car built back in the 1950s before emission controls and on-board computers and I am not talking about changing your own engine oil or air filter which is a class C level ability. Today it takes better than a degree in NASA engineering to diagnose and repair most newer cars. The satellite communication system intended for a new 1978 Cadillac would have sent you a postcard in the mail telling you your car is polluting the air and you only have twenty starts left on your car and if you did not fix your car it would not start until it was fixed.
My diagnostic computer was fiber-optic ready in 1982 , But it was about 2004 before we had any fiber optic cable in the ground here in Helena, Montana, to plug into and I still cannot plug into it where I live. So it only took about twenty-eight years for the rest of the world to catch up to my car or my diagnostic computer. Can you fix your computer?
Understanding Global Warming, is a piece of cake.
Fixing a new Cadillac, is a pain in the butt.