Writing Code for Spacecraft

CowboyRobot writes "In an article subtitled, "And you think *your* operating system needs to be reliable." Queue has an interview with the developer of the OS that runs on the Mars Rovers. Mike Deliman, chief engineer of operating systems at Wind River Systems, has quotes like, 'Writing the code for spacecraft is no harder than for any other realtime life- or mission-critical application. The thing that is hard is debugging a problem from another planet.' and, 'The operating system and kernel fit in less than 2 megabytes; the rest of the code, plus data space, eventually exceeded 30 megabytes.'"

Efficiency

[Maxim Kovalenko]

"The operating system and kernel fit in less than 2 megabytes; the rest of the code, plus data space, eventually exceeded 30 megabytes." This should be used as the example for efficient coding

Summary of OS code

[boingyzain]

while (1 = 1) { Dig(); Picture(); }

In outer space...

[Anonymous Coward]

...rover codes you!

Reinventing the wheel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have just used WinCE, with a few of the productivity apps cut out. Adding a copy of pocket Auto-route, with some Martian JPEGS would have helped navigation as well.

Re:hard to imagine..

[Coneasfast]

I guess having a sysop reboot is out of the question...

Oh shit, i forgot to rerun 'lilo' before rebooting!

Re:Summary of OS code

[caramelcarrot]

c:\rover\code\main.cpp(3) : error C2106: '=' : left operand must be l-value

Not quite bug free yet.

Re:Summary of OS code

[zeath]

roveros.c: 1: non-lvalue in assignment
make: *** [roveros] Error 1 I'm sorry, your rover is lost in space. Insert $1 billion and press any key to try again.

Re:hmm...

[grub]

i>and the cost of development and deployment is almost 3x that of an embedded linux

When a spacecraft millions of kilometers from Earth packs it in I'm sure a project leader at NASA would be happy they saved 2/3 of the price on a relatively small ticket item.

I hope they had the foresight to add spam-blocking

[Infinityis]

From Mr.Marvin
Olympus Mons Coast.

DEAR SIR/MADAM,

I AM HAPPY TO WRITE AND SEND THIS MESSAGE TO YOU.
AND I STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT THIS MESSAGE WOULD COME TO YOU AS A SURPRISE BUT I HOPE YOU WILL CONSIDER IT AS A CALL FROM A FAMILY IN DARE NEED AND GIVE IT URGENT CONSIDERATION. MY NAME IS MR marvin, A CITIZEN OF MARS AND THE SON OF LATE DR. FIDELIS GUBWANO WHO BEFORE HIS DEATH WAS THE MANAGER OF MARTIAN FINANCIAL TRUST CORPORATION (M.F.T.C). UPON HIS DEATH HE $60,000,000 (SIXTY MILLION U.S. DOLLARS) IN A THE OLYMPUS MONS BRANCH OF THE MARTIAN PLANETARY BANKING SYSTEM. I BELIEVE YOU TO BE AN HONEST AND TRUSTWORTY CITIZEN AND CAPABLE OF ASSISTING ME IN REMOVING THE MONEY FROM THIS ACCOUNT.

compilation error found

[circletimessquare]

#include
int main() {
printf("Hello World!\n");
return 0;
}

marsrover.c: 3: You are no longer on the planet Earth.

Re:hmm...

[Infinityis]

Not gonna happen, for one big reason. I could just see the Slashdot headline:

Mars Rover HaX0r3d and OS replaced with Linux.

Shortly thereafter, Micro$oft claims that they can enforce patent infringement on Mars...

Huh, its easy..

[adeyadey]

you are in a red rocky landscape..

GO NORTH..

you are in a red rocky landscape..

DIG.

ok. you see some red sand.
it is getting dark.

GO NORTH..

you were eaten by a grue.

Microsoft Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Hands down for any Mission Critical application.

Spacecraft

[sheetsda]

Writing Code for Spacecraft

My first thought was "Spacecraft? is that a new Starcraft clone I hadn't heard about?". It was then I realized I've been hanging out on the Game Programming Wiki [gpwiki.org] too much lately.

Re:Summary of OS code

[sahonen]

10 DIG 20 PICTURE 30 GOTO 10

Re:hmm...

[Tablizer]

[public source code] Not gonna happen, for one big reason. I could just see the Slashdot headline: Mars Rover HaX0r3d and OS replaced with Linux.

More likely: "Mars Rover Draws Goatse In Sand"

Re:Similar, though terrestrial, problems

[ballpoint]

Are you telling me that the company you work(ed) for was partly responsible for <shouting>ONE OF THE MOST ANNOYING THINGS I EVER SUFFERED FROM</shouting> ?

Some years ago, I started being waked up haphazardly by the phone ringing. The day of the month was random, the day of the week was random, the time of the night was random between 2 and 5 AM but it sure freaked me, and my wife, out.

Calls to the telco had no effect. They tested (or at least pretended to) the line and said: "Oh no Sir, everything is fine!".

I ended up connecting a digital storage oscilloscope on the wires and leaving it running overnight, tweaking the thresholds until I was finally able to capture the overvoltage pulses that were causing my phones to ring.

Armed with the proof I managed to get through to a technically competent person in the telco with some authority (imagine the immenseness of that accomplishment !).

It ended up with the telco contacting the manufacturer of my (telco certified) phone switch to work out a correction, that manufacturer sending a technician turning up to solder a few resistors and a cap in place and charging me the equivalent of $100 for something I could easily have done myself.

<shouting time="again&amp;again">F*CK F*CK F*CK</shouting>