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The software that flies SpaceX rockets and starships

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Re: The software that flies SpaceX rockets and starships

#51

Post by dotancohen »

happy-go-lucky wrote: post #35
dotancohen wrote: post #10

> ...when you plan to reuse booster rockets and shuttles on future missions. Shuttles? I'm aware of the general term shuttle as a vehicle for going back and forth, but here I'm certain that the better term would be craft, capsule, or Dragon. Certainly not shuttle.

A space shuttle is by definition a reusable spacecraft that carries people and cargo between Earth and space. You mean the shuttle has been replaced by something newer and hence is an obsolete word?

No, I mean that they are talking about "boosters and ___" therefore ___ refers to a component, not the system as a whole. The term shuttle might refer to the whole system that is needed to shuttle people up and down, but the terms that fit the structure "boosters and ___" are craft, capsule, Dragon, maybe a few others, but not shuttle.

Doubly so when that is not a term that SpaceX uses to refer to any component or system.

Re: The software that flies SpaceX rockets and starships

#52

Post by idealmedtech »

7thaccount wrote: post #39
tangoed wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Reddit AmA by SpaceX software team that has some important details!

Yep, this and there is a Quora question somewhere I think iirc. It's mostly LabView I think, which is an interesting choice given all the hate it gets. For those that don't know, LabView is a graphical (drag and drop) language for the most part where you interconnect various hardware components together. The advantage is that a lot of labs need to plug a lot of devices and sensors to run an experiment and LabView has…

We use LabVIEW, probably one of the few non-aero startups that do. It's great for parallel computation and test stand stuff, but I doubt they're flying LabVIEW executables. Most of the utility of LabVIEW comes on the V&V side (running lots of tests and logging lots of data).

Also it's very easy to build maintainable code in LabVIEW (contrary to the popular narrative), but there's a serious lack of good learning resources, and most people don't even take Core 1 and 2 before trying to code. Kind of like how a person on the business end of things may discover VB.NET and create some horrifying macros, simply because they don't know any better.

Re: The software that flies SpaceX rockets and starships

#53

Post by Trex_Egg »

7thaccount wrote: post #39
tangoed wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Reddit AmA by SpaceX software team that has some important details!

Yep, this and there is a Quora question somewhere I think iirc. It's mostly LabView I think, which is an interesting choice given all the hate it gets. For those that don't know, LabView is a graphical (drag and drop) language for the most part where you interconnect various hardware components together. The advantage is that a lot of labs need to plug a lot of devices and sensors to run an experiment and LabView has…

may be for prototyping labview is useful or python perhaps. but for real time I still think they rely upon C++

Re: The software that flies SpaceX rockets and starships

#54

Post by futharkshill »

spyremeown wrote: post #2

If someone from SpaceX is reading (after 5pm, of course), can we get a more nitty-gritty of what's going on software-wise on your end? I'd love to see what control and embedded wizardry you guys are up to.

is it just me who cannot find it, or did this article basically only state the hertz of the processors?

Re: The software that flies SpaceX rockets and starships

#57

Post by procarch2019 »

fallingmeat wrote: post #28

Interesting they seem to ad-hoc the lifecycle processes, or at least no mention of any industry standards mandatory (RTCA/DO-178C, ISO26262 or even sys eng like SAE ARP4754, etc). Also, no talk of formal methods (formal modeling or formal verification, a la DO-333 with something like Simulink Design Verf or TLA+). Works for them obviously!

I’m not sure that I took this away from the article. Looked like they just didn’t go into detail. They mentioned storing data for keeping track of equipment health. To me that sounds like a super broad stroke that would be equivalent to historized time series data as well as contextualized asset data.

I’m not familiar with the standards you called out (not an aerospace engineer), but I would imagine it’s similar to what we do in the controls engineering and automation space.

I’m actually really curious about what software/methods they use to contextualize assets and what those data points are. How do They digitize the equipment data that comes from visual inspections/manual testing.

I wish it was a little more detailed in general.

Re: The software that flies SpaceX rockets and starships

#58

Post by lokimedes »

This article provides an excellent summary of why the defense and space industry is different from “tech”. What SpaceX is doing is normal practice in Defense, but it reads like “1975” when you’re used to TypeScript and cloud instances.

I really love my role of spanning the gulf between these worlds. There’s so much to learn from each side to the other.

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