Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to appreciate just how unwilling a flight mission is to take on any unnecessary technical risk. Risk, along with cost, schedule, and mass, is one of the fundamental things mission designers must cope with. Lisp looks like risk, and risk will be eliminated ruthlessly I've spoken with programmers at NASA. There have been times when management thought source control was a risk. Discovering a bug in the mathema…
Regarding risks, I think you're understating the sophistication and importance of risks on flight projects. (I work at JPL, but not on flight projects; once upon a time, the OP's office was right down the hall from mine.) A modest sized flight project will have a risk list which is itemized down to great detail, covering many pages, and this list will be one of the main things the mission managers work on reducing. I…
Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)
#41Sounds like JPL is a lot more sophisticated than NASA in this regard. This is weird, since NASA flys a lot more manned missions.