I’m really curious what language the telemetry data is written in. Does anyone know what the historically preferred language is?
No idea for SpaceX, but a lot of commercial avionics run code written in Ada.
What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
91–100 of 160 posts
Re: What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
#92Sounds kinda disappointing/irresponsible. Chromium is an overly complex, relatively buggy piece of software. For example I recently experienced a bug where a text I selected was significantly offset from what should have been selected given the pointer position (on linux), a misclicky kind of bug. Considering that the majority of Crew Dragon's controls are through touch screen, maybe even manual docking(not sure, but…
In this case, C++ code is written in a different style than regular applications: exceptions are not allowed, allocations are not allowed past a certain point in program initialization, raw pointers are frowned upon, etc. This is common in this type of software and when you pair it with the right development culture it really makes a difference in the robustness of the result.
Is C++ code formally verified, e.g. with something like Coq?
Re: What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
#93seems like while most of us worried about the singularity;
leftpad managed to expand from planet earth to the ISS. well played!
#universalpaperclips
Re: What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
#94I’m really curious what language the telemetry data is written in. Does anyone know what the historically preferred language is?
Bytecode, it seems :) https://mars.nasa.gov/MPF/rovercom/telem.html
Re: What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
#95The Flight Software team is about 35 people. We write all the code for Falcon 9, Grasshopper, and Dragon applications; and do the core platform work, also on those vehicles; we also write simulation software; test the flight code; write the communications and analysis software, deployed in our ground stations. We also work in Mission Control to support active missions.
Imagine if everyone on earth was as productive as those 35 people.
Re: What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
#96They should have said "Visual Basic and some Excel macros", just to see the Twitter reactions.
Re: What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
#97The Flight Software team is about 35 people. We write all the code for Falcon 9, Grasshopper, and Dragon applications; and do the core platform work, also on those vehicles; we also write simulation software; test the flight code; write the communications and analysis software, deployed in our ground stations. We also work in Mission Control to support active missions.
Imagine if everyone on earth was as productive as those 35 people.
I’m imagining the insane work hours.
Re: What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
#98Other references say parts of Falcon9 and Dragon a version of Unix calLed VxWorks from Charles River. It is realtime (not virtual) and predates Linux. NASA uses it in a lot of its space probes because its been debugged for 33 years.
That doesnt means its perfect. The two 2003 Mars rovers experienced a bug in the then-newfangled flash memory driver. It was successfully fixed and reloaded from Earth.
Re: What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
#99The Flight Software team is about 35 people. We write all the code for Falcon 9, Grasshopper, and Dragon applications; and do the core platform work, also on those vehicles; we also write simulation software; test the flight code; write the communications and analysis software, deployed in our ground stations. We also work in Mission Control to support active missions.
Imagine if everyone on earth was as productive as those 35 people.
It reminds me of this olognion piece:
https://www.theolognion.com/unreal-engine-5-is-meant-to-ridi...
That's not just hilarious, that's also pretty close to how I feel most of the time.
I mean, some people have built the Airbus A380.
On the other hand, last week, I created a test DB with the user "test" and the password "test". I couldn't connect to it, and after a long debugging session, noticed I misspelled "test".
So, yeah...
Re: What computer and software is used by the Falcon 9? (2015)
#100Knowing that the ground control software is written in LabView is one of the more disappointing things I've read recently. I did a bunch of test engineering during co-ops during college, including multiple "codebases" of LabView, plus the normal class coursework and research lab instrumentation. I hate LabView, to the degree that I made a commitment never to apply to a job that has it's use as one of the requirements or as part of the desired qualifications.
I remember working on a getting a brushless motor test stand up and running using a LabView VI, which was written by one of the senior test engineers a couple years before. After spending days working on it, I eventually went to him for help. He sat down with me and it for another two hours, and even then, he needed to take the code (that he wrote!) and go sit down with it alone the next day for several hours to understand what was going on. If you're not working it essentially full-time, on the same codebase, it's insanely difficult to maintain any non-trivial code.
What makes the situation even a bigger shame is that National Instruments makes Labwindows/CVI, an ANSI C equivalent to LabView. The few times I've used it (in a graduate-level experimental physics class), it was so much easier to use and maintain.