Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft • Hacker News Board

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#11

Post by johansch » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #9

microcolonel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to feel that way; but yeah most software I see come out of Japan scares me. Outside of legally-critical software, such as automotive control systems: it doesn't seem that there is much focus on quality. I suspect it has to do with the scale of integrators in the country being much smaller, and lacking in terms of B2B collaboration. There are some jewels here and there, though. It's probably just a matter of cu…

Software isn't valued as much in Japan, and the pay isn't that high.

Nintendo seems to care quite a lot (I worked at Opera when the two companies built the Wii browser together. Wow. They were incredibly brutally perfectionist, in a painful but somehow admirable way. I've never seen a company doing so many iterations of some particular detail before that.)

But yeah, I agree, whenever a large Japanese company that is not Nintendo does software (at least for consumers), you can pretty much expect a disaster.

(I know there's a small group of startups that do good stuff - I am not talking about them.)

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#12

Post by johansch » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:36 PM UTC

johansch wrote: post #5

microcolonel wrote: post #2

This is just depressing. How was this not tested? This is complete sign reversal of a control output; you'd think it would show up immediately.

(I have absolutely no insight into the software development practices of JAXA and their subcontractors, so I apologize if this is insensitive or uniformed.) Is this another sign of how bad japanese hardware -oriented companies and organizations are at doing software? Like the organisational software crisis at Toyota? Or was it a fluke?

So the rate of downvotes seem to be one per ten minutes since the time of posting.

Why?

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#13

Post by tlb » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:37 PM UTC

I'm surprised that they had to design custom inertial stabilization, considering how many times it's been done successfully before. Was it NIH mentality? Or did it have some requirement for more precise stabilization than other space telescopes?

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#14

Post by jlgaddis » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

johansch wrote: post #12

johansch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I have absolutely no insight into the software development practices of JAXA and their subcontractors, so I apologize if this is insensitive or uniformed.) Is this another sign of how bad japanese hardware -oriented companies and organizations are at doing software? Like the organisational software crisis at Toyota? Or was it a fluke?

So the rate of downvotes seem to be one per ten minutes since the time of posting. Why?

I didn't downvote your original comment (just saw it and this one at the same time), but perhaps it has something to do with your blanket categorization of all Japanese software?

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#15

Post by protomyth » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

johansch wrote: post #11

sitkack wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software isn't valued as much in Japan, and the pay isn't that high.

Nintendo seems to care quite a lot (I worked at Opera when the two companies built the Wii browser together. Wow. They were incredibly brutally perfectionist, in a painful but somehow admirable way. I've never seen a company doing so many iterations of some particular detail before that.) But yeah, I agree, whenever a large Japanese company that is not Nintendo does software (at least for consumers), you can pretty m…

I think there is an interview where Steve Jobs said as much in regards to Sony and why they didn't own the market before the iPod.

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#16

Post by johansch » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

jlgaddis wrote: post #14

johansch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the rate of downvotes seem to be one per ten minutes since the time of posting. Why?

I didn't downvote your original comment (just saw it and this one at the same time), but perhaps it has something to do with your blanket categorization of all Japanese software?

Well, if you read my comment properly, you'll realize that what I actually said is that large japanese hardware companies tend to be really bad at software. Nintendo is pretty much the one exception.

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#17

Post by b123400 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #6

johansch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I have absolutely no insight into the software development practices of JAXA and their subcontractors, so I apologize if this is insensitive or uniformed.) Is this another sign of how bad japanese hardware -oriented companies and organizations are at doing software? Like the organisational software crisis at Toyota? Or was it a fluke?

I hate to feel that way; but yeah most software I see come out of Japan scares me. Outside of legally-critical software, such as automotive control systems: it doesn't seem that there is much focus on quality. I suspect it has to do with the scale of integrators in the country being much smaller, and lacking in terms of B2B collaboration. There are some jewels here and there, though. It's probably just a matter of cu…

I work for a Japanese company and sometimes work with people from other companies as well. Most of the people around me avoid English at their best, therefore cannot not access to the knowledge on stackoverflow, also documents in Japanese are usually old or incomplete. Of course it depends on the field (e.g. Japanese documents of ruby on rails are pretty good), I am not sure about aerospace engineering, but I'd not be surprise if most of them feeling uncomfortable reading English.

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#18

Post by dwc » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

This is the key passage:

    The spacecraft then automatically switched into a safe
    mode and, at about 4:10 a.m., fired thrusters to try to
    stop the rotation. But because the wrong command had
    been uploaded, the firing caused the spacecraft to
    accelerate further. (The improper command had been
    uploaded to the satellite weeks earlier without proper
    testing; JAXA says that it is investigating what
    happened.)

Going into safe mode is a thing. It happens with NASA stuff, ESA stuff, whatever. The spacecraft failed to stabilize and went into safe mode, and that's proper. Whatever glitch in the systems, this would have saved it and allowed for recovery.

But the uploaded command to shed rotational velocity was wrong. This is what caused the loss of the spacecraft. I'm sure there will be a pretty heavy postmortem on how this happened.

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#19

Post by kinai » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:05 PM UTC

someone committed Harakiri, I guarantee it

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#20

Post by martin_henk » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #8

johansch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I have absolutely no insight into the software development practices of JAXA and their subcontractors, so I apologize if this is insensitive or uniformed.) Is this another sign of how bad japanese hardware -oriented companies and organizations are at doing software? Like the organisational software crisis at Toyota? Or was it a fluke?

Brother wrote the software.

Source?