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NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

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Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#211

Post by zrail »

rrdharan wrote: post #200
zrail wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI and universal healthcare would enable _so_ many people to take risks that they can't today. We would see an explosion in the arts, in fundamental science, in passion projects like this. It would be absolutely incredible. Except according to half of the people in charge it would mean The Wrong People would get money and all they would do is buy drugs. And that's why we can't have nice things.

Is this about the US specifically? There are many countries with universal healthcare and a decent social safety net (Scandinavia comes to mind). Why haven’t we seen this explosion coming out of them?

I was speaking of the US, yes. I should have been more specific.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#214

Post by ngcc_hk »

doubloon wrote: post #151
jtvjan wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rewrite in Scratch is in the early planning stages.

then Microsoft Power Automate, basically the same thing as Scratch but we can get a support contract.

Actually a linux is in the pipeline. Everything has to run linux for once. Even in o… cloud.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#215

Post by ben_w »

_8j50 wrote: post #118
shmde wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Muricans will use anything but metric.

Metric doesn't let people grasp large numbers.

Metric is neither better or worse than anything else, in that regard.

Describing a distance as "4 Plutos" isn't that helpful when Pluto is too dim to see with the naked eye, and still only a dot with a good ground-based telescope.

Even smaller distances like "AU" are too big for a human mind, with the Earth itself being less than a pixel across if the orbits were drawn to scale on an 8K monitor.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#216

Post by rrdharan »

aklemm wrote: post #209
rrdharan wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this about the US specifically? There are many countries with universal healthcare and a decent social safety net (Scandinavia comes to mind). Why haven’t we seen this explosion coming out of them?

Go there and look at how they live; that takes inspiration. The benefits of their social welfare are apparent in their lifestyle compared to US daily life. And the flip: Shouldn't Scandinavia be overrun with drug-addled do-nothings if social welfare is so bad?

I completely agree and am generally supportive of universal healthcare and the welfare state and suspect the Scandinavian model would be an improvement on the current US state of affairs.

I’m just skeptical of the parent poster claim that a Cambrian innovation explosion awaits us all if we would just welfare harder.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#217

Post by medo-bear »

0xDEF wrote: post #183
coldtea wrote: post #78

Before: In 1994 JPL started working on the Remote Agent (RA), an autonomous spacecraft control system. RA was written entirely in Common Lisp despite unrelenting political pressure to move to C++. At one point an attempt was made to port one part of the system (the planner) to C++. This attempt had to be abandoned after a year. Based on this experience I think it's safe to say that if not for Lisp the Remote Agent wo…

What is the most Lisp-like type safe language?

Coalton which runs on SBCL

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#218

Post by WrongAssumption »

croes wrote: post #182
mardifoufs wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So genetically inferior that they are the only ones with a craft that is 4 Plutos away :)

NASA uses metric

NASA didn’t begin to standardize on metric until 1990. Far after Voyager was developed and launched.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#219

Post by jjice »

qrybam wrote: post #31

This is incredible. Not just because of the engineering that went into such a long lived machine, but also because of the ingenuity of the teams that have looked after this mission and those currently working on it. Half a century of operation. Bits of data, like gold dust, peppering our radio telescopes with telemetry from the edges of our protective solar shell, and beyond. Not only is the technical achievement som…

The care that must go into writing and testing software that goes out to a machine like this is incredible. I write software that, if and when it fails, it fails hard and it just comes back with no added cost to me while I go ahead and look at what went wrong and release a fix within the hour.

Not having that failure feedback loop is daunting. I really respect that kind of work.

Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away

#220

Post by troyvit »

simpaticoder wrote: post #198
qrybam wrote: post #31

This is incredible. Not just because of the engineering that went into such a long lived machine, but also because of the ingenuity of the teams that have looked after this mission and those currently working on it. Half a century of operation. Bits of data, like gold dust, peppering our radio telescopes with telemetry from the edges of our protective solar shell, and beyond. Not only is the technical achievement som…

>Half a century of operation. The stability of society (specifically American, specifically California/Caltech/JPL/Pasadena) must also be marveled at. That's 2 or 3 generations of engineers and scientists that were trained well enough to actually get things done. This is a marvel of teaching, technical communication, and societal infrastructure. Notably, NASA/JPL has maintained its prestige and funding for that entir…

This is a really good point, especially for a country that is so young and that has grown so fast. Maybe the instability resulting from that growth is yet to come but it doesn't detract from what NASA and JPL have accomplished so far.
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