On Wednesday, acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau told the House Appropriations Committee that the Federal Aviation Administration plans to replace its aging air traffic control systems, which still rely on floppy disks and Windows 95 computers, Tom's Hardware reports. The agency has issued a Request For Information to gather proposals from companies willing to tackle the massive infrastructure overhaul.

"The whole idea is to replace the system. No more floppy disks or paper strips," Rocheleau said during the committee hearing. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the project "the most important infrastructure project that we've had in this country for decades," describing it as a bipartisan priority.

Most air traffic control towers and facilities across the US currently operate with technology that seems frozen in the 20th century, although that isn't necessarily a bad thing—when it works. Some controllers currently use paper strips to track aircraft movements and transfer data between systems using floppy disks, while their computers run Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system, which launched in 1995.

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SpaceX has so far completed eight launches of its mighty Starship rocket — the most powerful ever to fly — with two of them taking place this year. Now the Elon Musk-led spaceflight company has permission to dramatically increase the number of annual Starship launches from its Starbase facility in Texas from five to 25. […]

The union for air traffic controllers says this is a bad idea.