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I highly recommend watching "Its Quieter in the Twilight" ( https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9rrxr ) a cool documentary about the engineers still running voyager (a lot of them have been on it for decades)
this is correct link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9rrxrg
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Video isn't there... but I found it on YT. https://youtu.be/RIP1p5gAoak?si=ftTEGYFJscXJPaJm
Unfortunately geoblocked it seems.
I highly recommend watching "Its Quieter in the Twilight" ( https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9rrxr ) a cool documentary about the engineers still running voyager (a lot of them have been on it for decades)
Content not available. Any chance it wasn't like that 10 minutes ago?
As the should. Voyagers are still active and this maintenance is needed in case issues occur. In a way due to the +24 hours oneway communication to correct software issues should they occur, this will help speed corrections up. Now I wonder how the test it ? Is it on a software emulator on modern equipment or do they have a Voyager replica ?
What they have is surprisingly fragmentary. For the recent software issue, they had to be very conservative in what they changed because they aren't 100% sure about the details of the ISA on the actual spacecraft (due to amiguity between different revisions of the wiring of the CPU), and so they don't really have a simulator they can trust.
To me that souns like we should test all revisions of the CPU, not none of them
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I would go further... This project gives a rare opportunity for a young engineer to learn to build truly mission critical, resilient software while requiring complete, top to bottom understanding of the software and hardware stack.
I am no longer a junior, but would have been upset to be tasked with refreshing the old historical obsolete laundry (no matter how sacred or distinguished), expecially when I already had experience delivering safety critical products packing much more modern technologies. The opportunity they would be offering is not rare at all! The opportunity to research and design something truly new on the other way is very scar…
And you're left with a codebase that has been in hands of 6 Decades of probably great engineers that have already done a lot, plus any of the arcane cruft of such a long lived and esoteric project
It's a great CV highlight, but I don't know if it's the best learning opportunity
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What they have is surprisingly fragmentary. For the recent software issue, they had to be very conservative in what they changed because they aren't 100% sure about the details of the ISA on the actual spacecraft (due to amiguity between different revisions of the wiring of the CPU), and so they don't really have a simulator they can trust.
Maybe I'm used to think of NASA as this infinite budget agency, but considering Voyager's significance... To me that souns like we should test all revisions of the CPU, not none of them
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would go further... This project gives a rare opportunity for a young engineer to learn to build truly mission critical, resilient software while requiring complete, top to bottom understanding of the software and hardware stack.
I am no longer a junior, but would have been upset to be tasked with refreshing the old historical obsolete laundry (no matter how sacred or distinguished), expecially when I already had experience delivering safety critical products packing much more modern technologies. The opportunity they would be offering is not rare at all! The opportunity to research and design something truly new on the other way is very scar…
The opportunity to maintain software running on a spacecraft is not rare? I don't think so. And those two particular spacecrafts? I'd take that job in a flash.
Regarding "that almost nobody on Earth fully understands anymore", I claim this is nonsense, and definitely not an obstacle. I've audited codebases in languages that I haven't programmed in. It is a matter of grasping a few basic concepts, like branch execution, branch destination, where data is stored, how it is communicated. Don Lancaster told us how to do this: https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/enhance_vI.pdf .
The parent comment is apt. Of course, languages have their own quirks. But, as Christopher Strachey is once claimed to have said, “I use the same language no matter what compiler I run.”
Now what is more likely to be true is that the code is strangely structured (both because structured programming was new then, and because of memory and processor limitations), and also that much of the internal documentation has been lost. I wish the article had been clearer on that.
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I think people tend to squander door openers with bad layouts or information density. Most CVs are essentially the same as each other, just a bullet point list of jira ticket titles. Do I care if someone has won the world championship for ping-pong 3 years in a row? Not particularly. Does it make them stand out against a sea of slop? Only if I actually see that info when skimming! But if I do see it, I'm probably goi…
So you're giving me an idea for my midlife career change CV. Lead with the cool and interesting fact above all else, then have the normal CV menu fare at the end. Hmm this is also drumming up the hard question of: What have I actually done which is ACTUALLY an attention-grabber...