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NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

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Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#101

Post by wglb »

ndiddy wrote: post #99
wglb wrote: post #66

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 .

> Regarding "that almost nobody on Earth fully understands anymore", I claim this is nonsense, and definitely not an obstacle. It seems like you aren't very familiar with the history of the Voyager or the computer systems it uses. The Voyager has three onboard computers, each of which has a custom ISA. Two of the three computers were only used on Voyagers. After the main Voyager mission ended in the late 1980s and th…

I was responding to the headline that says:

>NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code in a 1970s-era programming language that almost nobody on Earth fully understands anymore

I did not address the issue of the hardware documentation, just the issue raised by the headline. I fully understand the issues that the hardware and the problems of not having a full map of the hardware or a test bed to check out the code.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#102

Post by egorfine »

birdsongs wrote: post #24
RagnarD wrote: post #7

It's mind boggling that they didn't digitize every last scrap of paper around the project years ago, for starters.

I mean, they were never meant to last this long. NASA has a shoestring budget. I understand not taking the time and resources to do that when it could stop working a week later.

I'm pretty sure volunteers will happily do this if NASA gave permission.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#103

Post by egorfine »

ndiddy wrote: post #99
wglb wrote: post #66

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 .

> Regarding "that almost nobody on Earth fully understands anymore", I claim this is nonsense, and definitely not an obstacle. It seems like you aren't very familiar with the history of the Voyager or the computer systems it uses. The Voyager has three onboard computers, each of which has a custom ISA. Two of the three computers were only used on Voyagers. After the main Voyager mission ended in the late 1980s and th…

> Microsoft Word document, with optical character recognition scans

It's incredible that there is someone out there in this world who thought that OCRing documentation into a Word document is a good idea. And implemented it.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#104

Post by ndiddy »

wglb wrote: post #101
ndiddy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regarding "that almost nobody on Earth fully understands anymore", I claim this is nonsense, and definitely not an obstacle. It seems like you aren't very familiar with the history of the Voyager or the computer systems it uses. The Voyager has three onboard computers, each of which has a custom ISA. Two of the three computers were only used on Voyagers. After the main Voyager mission ended in the late 1980s and th…

I was responding to the headline that says: >NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code in a 1970s-era programming language that almost nobody on Earth fully understands anymore I did not address the issue of the hardware documentation, just the issue raised by the headline. I fully understand the issues that the hardware and the problems of not having a full map of the hardware or a test bed to check o…

Well the 1970s era programming language would be the assembly language for the bespoke Voyager processors, and the spotty institutional knowledge and lack of a Voyager on the ground means that there's no full understanding. I'm not sure what's inaccurate here.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#105

Post by M95D »

glimshe wrote: post #3
rbanffy wrote: post #2

> younger engineers often have the capability but not the inclination Kids these days... Why would someone in their right mind think working on the Voyager project could damage their careers? You can work on new and fancy tools all you want to improve supporting tools, and it's still one of the coolest space missions active. Plus, it has a real end - at some point, support will be further reduced and the person will…

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.

It also gives a rare opportunity to fuck things up and fail a mission that nobody else fucked up in ~50 years.

Re: NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

#106

Post by M95D »

rbanffy wrote: post #26
PurpleRamen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But would you give them a job? Would they even match the requirements?

I would assume they have built some key problem-solving skills that can be valuable. Training in tooling is much easier than building the right mindset.

But the required midset today is "move fast and break things"...
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