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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

#41

Post by nickjj »

roflmaostc wrote: post #16

Many of the issues could potentially be solved by modern LLMs? Reading, analyzing and assembling documentation could be probably done by LLMs. And by including old code and snippets into the training set, the LLM could be fairly proficient in writing this code probably too? Maybe someone knows more about the use/not-use of LLMs in this context?

> Many of the issues could potentially be solved by modern LLMs?

Yesterday I asked an LLM what customizations niri made to the KDL language.

It said niri modified the language to add single line comments with //. However if you visit the official home page of KDL https://kdl.dev/, the very first example shows single line comments as being part of the official spec. There's also a whole page dedicated to comments in the spec that mention this.

The moral of the story is LLMs are honestly really really bad and I'm sincerely concerned at how they manipulate people into thinking what they produce is accurate or trustable. I didn't believe the AI because my spidey sense said that doesn't feel right, so I double checked the real source.

It's gotten to the point where I'm finding a huge majority of the time, it provides incorrect information on really basic things. Pure hallucinations. I'm at the stage now where even if you paid me, I wouldn't use it. There's a 0% chance I'd ever consider paying for it in its current state and it's upsetting because it is killing off the web in real-time. It's becoming harder and harder to find useful and accurate information.

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

#42

Post by anthonj »

rbanffy wrote: post #25
anthonj wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What have you worked on that is as cool as a space probe that's cruising in interstellar space and still collecting valuable data? There are a lot of things as cool as, done by people I know, such as the gyros on the Webb telescope, the APU in the F-35, or a small rack-mountable Cesium reference clock, but there aren't many opportunities like that.

That's the thing. You only have the cool factor, but that wears off very quickly when you are maintaining legacy code and tools and then your collegues are playing with the new hot and shiny toys.

I won't write about the projects I've been involved with for privacy, but to give you an idea some of my old team members were involved in ams-02 for example.

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

#44

Post by lexicality »

xingped wrote: post #9
lexicality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm reviewing CVs and I see that you worked at NASA on the Voyager code, you're getting an interview just so I can ask about it. I wouldn't normally approve of CV driven development, but for this?!

I agree, and I would think the same, but I also feel like many things I've been sold as "door openers" for interviews unfortunately tend to ultimately be things that no one cares about.

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 going to stop and re-read the whole thing, which is a tactical advantage.

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

#45

Post by thadt »

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.

Maybe not years ago, but scanning documents with the phone in your pocket has become incredibly efficient. That combined with AI transcription and indexing for search makes such a project faster and cheaper in 2026 than at almost any other time in the past.

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

#46

Post by rcxdude »

jmclnx wrote: post #18

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.

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

#47

Post by roflmaostc »

doodlesdev wrote: post #20
roflmaostc wrote: post #16

Many of the issues could potentially be solved by modern LLMs? Reading, analyzing and assembling documentation could be probably done by LLMs. And by including old code and snippets into the training set, the LLM could be fairly proficient in writing this code probably too? Maybe someone knows more about the use/not-use of LLMs in this context?

I don't think you want LLMs touching projects that cost over $800.000.000, even to assemble "documentation" (since the LLM can't really document in as much it's translating what it's reading, because documentation includes much more information than what's stored in the code itself). It's a cool idea, though, I'd like to see this done as an experiment :)

I am fully aware of the costs and so on. But i can certainly imagine that LLMs help with the process of understanding and editing old code.

And of course you need to test and debug before you ship to production.

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

#48

Post by aworks »

quotemstr wrote: post #33
PurpleRamen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids these days... Why would someone in their right mind think working on the Voyager project could damage their careers? It's an isolated legacy-project with no future. Mostly everything you learn for it will be only useful for this specific project, so all time to invest there is time to can't invest into something useful. Sure, there are probably some parts to learn from this too, but It's less than what your co…

You should hire for personality characteristics, not knowledge. I'll take anyone who's worked on a weird obscure system and figured it out from first principles over Front End React Dev #8482828 with Opinions on algebraic effects.

It would also be an interesting job, even if off the beaten track.

As a hiring manager, if I saw this on a resume interspersed with various web development work, I would be intrigued.

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

#49

Post by rvnx »

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.

NASA has a significantly larger overall budget than SpaceX for info

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

#50

Post by rvnx »

doodlesdev wrote: post #20
roflmaostc wrote: post #16

Many of the issues could potentially be solved by modern LLMs? Reading, analyzing and assembling documentation could be probably done by LLMs. And by including old code and snippets into the training set, the LLM could be fairly proficient in writing this code probably too? Maybe someone knows more about the use/not-use of LLMs in this context?

I don't think you want LLMs touching projects that cost over $800.000.000, even to assemble "documentation" (since the LLM can't really document in as much it's translating what it's reading, because documentation includes much more information than what's stored in the code itself). It's a cool idea, though, I'd like to see this done as an experiment :)

Anthropic / Google / Meta / Airbus / Boeing / ASML EUV machines, etc, etc... are all developed using LLMs and they are much more expensive than this
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