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How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

clarkwakeland.com

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Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#141

Post by yashap »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #78
yashap wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, and it’s clearly stated in the article: > Safemode is the satellite equivalent of a blue screen of death. It’s about avoiding safemode, and more generally about the end-to-end QA/testing process for satellites before they’re sent up into orbit. It’s very clearly not about actual Windows BSODs, it’s just written in a tongue-in-cheek style. Those commenting about “wtf windows on a spacecraft” clearly didn’t rea…

This would be during formal testing, which is similar to what you might know as “acceptance testing”. The spacecraft doesn’t “enter safe mode” during development. If you’re paying two billion $ for something you become very very interested in test design and test results. Also, safe mode isn’t really the same as a BSOD. It’s a mode where the spacecraft decides something is wrong and disables a lot of functionality an…

Ah fair, definitely a very different environment than what I’ve worked in! Have only worked on SaaS, where all forms of testing (automated and manual) are a thing we do internally, without customer involvement. We’ll do things like turn features on/off for customers, have them provide feedback, but that’s more product feedback than them being part of the testing/QA process.

I have worked on software where individual customers pay millions for it, but not billions, and it’s also not a physical thing that can literally crash into earth or fly off into space if something goes wrong!

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#142

Post by pests »

cliff wrote: post #97
bboygravity wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And apparently the astronaut !touchscreen! GUI is written in Javascript (not a joke).

I think I was the person who originally proposed to implement the crew control UI in a web browser, and I participated in a week-long retreat in beautiful Bend, Oregon where we implemented the first prototype. At the time, some very good flight software engineers had been working diligently on a new UI framework that was written in the same code style and process as the rest of our flight software. However, I noticed…

This is how most of the YouTube clients work. They shipped a strip down web renderer (I forget if based off chrome or not) with an extremely stripped down set of HTML/CSS/JS features - just enough to run the YouTube UI.

Still get a familiar development experience, live updates, and able to run on constrained devices.

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#143

Post by hulitu »

bearjaws wrote: post #130
cliff wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I was the person who originally proposed to implement the crew control UI in a web browser, and I participated in a week-long retreat in beautiful Bend, Oregon where we implemented the first prototype. At the time, some very good flight software engineers had been working diligently on a new UI framework that was written in the same code style and process as the rest of our flight software. However, I noticed…

Wow a real SWE showing up and explaining how you can actually approach a real problem using a browser. Instead of just going "well its not compiled so clearly it will just randomly explode". I am always amazed how HN doesn't realize many mission & life critical systems are powered by JS - especially as a front end through a browser.

> I am always amazed how HN doesn't realize many mission & life critical systems are powered by JS - especially as a front end through a browser

I am always amazed how some people believe that adding more levels of abstraction leads to safer systems. /s

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#144

Post by hulitu »

tobylane wrote: post #106
cliff wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I was the person who originally proposed to implement the crew control UI in a web browser, and I participated in a week-long retreat in beautiful Bend, Oregon where we implemented the first prototype. At the time, some very good flight software engineers had been working diligently on a new UI framework that was written in the same code style and process as the rest of our flight software. However, I noticed…

When would the Chrome version be frozen? Once you've completed the UI?

> When would the Chrome version be frozen? Once you've completed the UI?

Updates keep us secure. /s

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#145

Post by mixmastamyk »

eternityforest wrote: post #140
mixmastamyk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a minimum it should use typescript, no? Also web pages get out of sync sometimes, and need to be reloaded, which doesn’t sound great for mission critical reliability. Compiled, typed UI lib sounds like a better fit.

Unless something actually crashes, which any code could do, then why would you need to reload? Just send a websocket message that requests the current full state. But if it's implemented correctly, it probably won't get out of sync.

Remote code doesn’t load correctly sometimes, just a fact of life in a distributed system. Maybe loading it locally reduces that to almost zero, but I’d still be more comfortable risking my life with a desktop app.

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#146

Post by bboygravity »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #145
eternityforest wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless something actually crashes, which any code could do, then why would you need to reload? Just send a websocket message that requests the current full state. But if it's implemented correctly, it probably won't get out of sync.

Remote code doesn’t load correctly sometimes, just a fact of life in a distributed system. Maybe loading it locally reduces that to almost zero, but I’d still be more comfortable risking my life with a desktop app.

How is a browser rendering local files on a machine without an internet connection not "a desktop app" though?

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#147

Post by bboygravity »

DrammBA wrote: post #92
bboygravity wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And apparently the astronaut !touchscreen! GUI is written in Javascript (not a joke).

> And apparently the astronaut !touchscreen! GUI is written in Javascript (not a joke). why would that be mistaken for a joke?

1. Because nobody in aerospace globally and in the history of humanity never did this before as far as I know. 2. Because many people not familiar with the exact application/industry (guilty) would assume that safety critical machines need to pass safety critical software tests/standards/languages. Javascript is definitely not known to fall in that category. 3. My main reason for thinking it was a joke when I first read it: I personally hate touchscreens (I actually use a phone with a physical keyboard on it). I would hate a touchscreen in a car, let alone a spacecraft. Let alone when I'm wearing a space-suit with massive gloves where touching the wrong button could maybe be life/death in the worse case or SUPER annoying in the best case.

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#148

Post by GlenTheMachine »

metadat wrote: post #135
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #22

Thee are a bunch of comments here asking why one would run Windows on a spacecraft. I am a spacecraft engineer. I don’t see anything in the linked article indicating that they are actually running Windows - the BSOD claim is tongue-in-cheek, or at least that’s how I read it. I also don’t know of anyone anywhere that runs Windows on a spacecraft, with the exception of laptops used by astronauts. Typically one runs vxW…

Is there any open-source equivalent to QNX?

No, unfortunately. QNX was itself not exactly open source, but at least used a “source code available for inspection” model and apparently had a fantastic user community.

Then it got bought by RIM (BlackBerry). The source code went away and the owners stopped responding to the user community and the whole thing basically became irrelevant.

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#149

Post by MichaelZuo »

wrs wrote: post #131
MichaelZuo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? That was a very recent change to linux.

It was merged to mainline Linux last week. The patches have been usable for many years if you compile a custom kernel.

It’s not quite Linux anymore if it’s a custom kernel…

Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft

#150

Post by rurban »

zanthras wrote: post #44
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #22

Thee are a bunch of comments here asking why one would run Windows on a spacecraft. I am a spacecraft engineer. I don’t see anything in the linked article indicating that they are actually running Windows - the BSOD claim is tongue-in-cheek, or at least that’s how I read it. I also don’t know of anyone anywhere that runs Windows on a spacecraft, with the exception of laptops used by astronauts. Typically one runs vxW…

Linux(with realtime patch) is used very heavily in spacecraft by Spacex. So both in terms of high visibility/important/danger (dragon 2) and high count (starlink) it is very widely used. citation https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/ncj4vz/we_are_the_s...

In the old shuttles also. They had dSpace controllers, which used rtlinux
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