This is demonstrated with the example of a cell phone or calculator these days having more computing power than the space crafts in the Apollo missions.
Control systems in US space shuttles have used 8086 Intel processors—the first x86 processor, released in 1979. This 16-bit processor could manage 1 MB of memory using an external 20-bit address bus. A derivation of this processor was used in the very first PC’s.
Intel stopped making these many years back, and because of this NASA actually had to buy some off of eBay back in 2002!
If you think that’s impressive, the soviets went to space without even having the benefits of computers. Their first successful space launches were calculated by hand! Unfortunately for them, not every mission was successful this way.
