6 ms·

NASA's last original Voyager engineer retires at 80

nyfresh 11y ago
"Though NASA found a younger engineer who was brought on to work with Zottarelli for a year and eventually replace him, Dodd said it's an impossible task. No one will replace him,' Dodd said." That's a lifetime of job security
- chrisan 11y ago
  > That's a lifetime of job security Maybe only 10 years? http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-far-can-voyager-i-go-4728025/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-far-can-voy...
jrapdx3 11y ago
What a great story. Quite heartening to find out about Zotterelli's accomplishments, after all, he started working on Voyager when he was 42. Goes to show, "senior" engineers are very capable of making noteworthy contributions. (In reflection of a recent HN thread about ageism in software industry.) The article also points out the extreme importance of documentation, because we never know what systems will still be running, or programs still in use 40 years in the future. It's truly terribly wrong to "take secrets to the grave", knowledge should be shared, we all have a stake in it. I fervently wish Voyager's secrets are recorded while there's still a chance, it's too important to just let it die.
vparikh 11y ago
"Finding people who can do that are few and far between" I always wonder what will happen with the next generations of programmers coming out of school - most of them get started with Python, Ruby or Java. And low level systems programming is mostly an after thought or an annoying class for most students. How will the industry deal with people who can't hack/program at a low level?
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  They'll just start hiring from the demoscene.
  - paublyrne 11y ago
    Is there still some kind of demoscene? Do people do that stuff still, or were you being ironic? Would love a link (if you're not being ironic)!
    - ddingus 11y ago
      Yes, and it's pretty awesome to follow. http://2015.revision-party.net/ http://2015.revision-party.net/ :) Check out some of the old school demos. They are still squeezing more out of that old 6502 and various custom chips.
    - qbi_ 11y ago
      AFAIK yes, the demoscene is still quite active. There are contests every year, and new demos get written for recent or older hardware altogether. See the recent 8088 mph [1] or more generally, the pouet website [2] [1] http://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all-your-emulators/ http://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all... [2] http://www.pouet.net/ http://www.pouet.net/
    - wingerlang 11y ago
      http://www.pouet.net/ http://www.pouet.net/ seems fairly active and as far as I know (I am not into the scene) it is THE website for demoscene stuff.
    - paublyrne 11y ago
      This is fantastic :) Thanks guys. I had an Amiga 600 when I was 10, but I didn't know anything about demos until much later. Wish I still had it :p
    - InclinedPlane 11y ago
      Indeed, and they achieve some amazing stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWdG413nNkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWdG413nNkI
vparikh 11y ago
"Finding people who can do that are few and far between" When I was growing up, we had to learn assembly to do anything meaning full on a C64. And 64k is all we had, and for the most part all we were ever going to get. How will the industry deal with people who can't hack/program at a low level? Its kind of scary when you have people with that much knowledge and experience leaving the industry. Especially one as young as ours. I always wonder what will happen with the next generations of programmers coming out of school - most of them get started with Python, Ruby or Java. And low level systems programming is mostly an after thought or an annoying class for most students. Congratulations to Mr. Zottarelli and a great and important career. And hopefully he will write a book about his work to help us along.
- meric 11y ago
  I had an ex-electrical engineering girlfriend who studied assembly as a core part of her degree. I think the low-level is covered more than you think, not in software engineering but in electrical engineering where the focus is on building platforms (transistors, CPU, Ram, hardware and assembly) to enable software to be written.
  - Demiurge 11y ago
    Yes. Even part of my pretty standard CS curriculum included electrical engineering (breadboard to ALU), assembly (self hosted interpreter/vm) and language theory (C clone) courses. With a bit of time I or my classmates could build a computer from scratch, but the relevancy of this to my day job of many years as web and scientific programmer has been zero to minor. I think it gives me enough insight into many phenomena, but the lower, the less it is relative to making stuff actually happen for people. We are building up.
- Demiurge 11y ago
  With the growth of any science and industry, there is depth of specialization. The overall expertise is not decreasing, it is increasing, and the breadth has to give.
- _fizz_buzz_ 11y ago
emersonrsantos 11y ago
Programming this thing should be an unique thing. Voyager 1 and 2 (and earlier Vikings) were not microprocessor-based. It was designed with custom-made radiation-hardened RCA CD4000, coupled with standard TTL ICs.
robinanil 11y ago
It's an amazing career and an honor to push mankind to the farthest reaches of space. Maybe we all can stand up for a moment and clap for him and his colleagues for a job well done.
codezero 11y ago
Wow. I have a PDP-11 manual with Voyager logos on it that I grabbed from a retiring physicist in the lab I used to work at – I guess I didn't realize that his retirement was part of life and reality where people move on :( Cool manual though! I've been tempted to donate it to either the computer history museum or NASA AMES (where it seems to have come from), but I kind of feel like they have dozens of these already
- codezero 11y ago
  I haven't dug them out in a while, turns out they're from Pioneer not Voyager, woops!
lucaspiller 11y ago
Kind of related, but what happens to the source code and designs of old spacecraft? Apart from Apollo, has NASA ever realeased any?
- clockworkelf 11y ago
  They released the source code for Apollo? Where can it be found? I thought they "lost" everything.
jgrahamc 11y ago
A couple of years ago I tried to interview him to get some of what he'd worked on written down. Unfortunately, I was never able to get a reply. It would be wonderful for someone to sit down and produce a video interview with him going through his work and the architecture of Voyager. If anyone knows a good way to contact him I would be very interested.
- unethical_ban 11y ago
  I noticed that no comment from him was in the article. I guess he may be averse to media contact.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
meesterdude 11y ago
First off, this is a beautiful article. Reading about software/devops at NASA is beyond fascinating to me, and it's crazy some of the things these guys have to do; most devops are just shaking off their training wheels, and NASA is riding a rocket powered motorbike down a ramp and over 50 cars while changing the bikes tires mid-air. But I want to reflect on something. The fact that this system is not maintainable outside of the last engineers lifetime is a failure of documentation and proper organization. I'll cut them some slack for launching a washing machine through space, but the maintainability failure is their fault; not simply the result of age or language age. Moving offices didn't help, but if you've just got papers everywhere that are so easily lost every time you move, that doesn't reflect well on the organizational front. It also speaks to how approachable a codebase should be, and what the long term benefits of proper documentation are. You never know how long the codebase you work on will be operational. All engineers should self-absolve themselves of the hit-by-a-bus problem. Still, I expect they'll learn from this. And with computers now it should be harder for them to actually lose things now. I just wanted to reflect on what the article meant to me.
- spoiledtechie 11y ago
  It might be their fault, but everyone who worked on that project in software were the pioneers at the time. So they didn't have the processes or knowledge to even know to document things.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    They weren't babes in the woods - processes existed even 'way back then'. They were a government project for heaven's sake! Other departments documented every iota of information about their projects (military, aeronatics, intelligence and on and on). Its amazing NASA got away with this crap for so long. I have no idea why.
    - mturmon 11y ago
      "Its amazing NASA got away with this crap for so long." This is unfair. The popular article we're talking about is trying to dramatize a milestone, but it does not say that his retirement threatens the spacecraft. It's being managed by training someone new. When you retire after many years of service, people will make laudatory comments, say you will be hard to replace (which will be true), and then move on. Incidentally, I believe he's not fully retired, because he's still listed in the employee directory here. Maybe it's set for the current work week, which for him, ends Friday.
eevilspock 11y ago
V'ger's latest Amazon purchase: God is Retired, by F'etzsche.
- gopowerranger 11y ago
  Non-sequitor! Does not compute!!
  - eevilspock 11y ago
    You had to have seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
clockworkelf 11y ago
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon.

"Though NASA found a younger engineer who was brought on to work with Zottarelli for a year and eventually replace him, Dodd said it's an impossible task. No one will replace him,' Dodd said." That's a lifetime of job security

chrisan 11y ago
> That's a lifetime of job security Maybe only 10 years? http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-far-can-voyager-i-go-4728025/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-far-can-voy...

jrapdx3 11y ago

What a great story. Quite heartening to find out about Zotterelli's accomplishments, after all, he started working on Voyager when he was 42. Goes to show, "senior" engineers are very capable of making noteworthy contributions. (In reflection of a recent HN thread about ageism in software industry.) The article also points out the extreme importance of documentation, because we never know what systems will still be running, or programs still in use 40 years in the future. It's truly terribly wrong to "take secrets to the grave", knowledge should be shared, we all have a stake in it. I fervently wish Voyager's secrets are recorded while there's still a chance, it's too important to just let it die.

vparikh 11y ago

"Finding people who can do that are few and far between" I always wonder what will happen with the next generations of programmers coming out of school - most of them get started with Python, Ruby or Java. And low level systems programming is mostly an after thought or an annoying class for most students. How will the industry deal with people who can't hack/program at a low level?

InclinedPlane 11y ago
They'll just start hiring from the demoscene.
- paublyrne 11y ago
  Is there still some kind of demoscene? Do people do that stuff still, or were you being ironic? Would love a link (if you're not being ironic)!
  - ddingus 11y ago
    Yes, and it's pretty awesome to follow. http://2015.revision-party.net/ http://2015.revision-party.net/ :) Check out some of the old school demos. They are still squeezing more out of that old 6502 and various custom chips.
  - qbi_ 11y ago
    AFAIK yes, the demoscene is still quite active. There are contests every year, and new demos get written for recent or older hardware altogether. See the recent 8088 mph [1] or more generally, the pouet website [2] [1] http://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all-your-emulators/ http://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all... [2] http://www.pouet.net/ http://www.pouet.net/
  - wingerlang 11y ago
    http://www.pouet.net/ http://www.pouet.net/ seems fairly active and as far as I know (I am not into the scene) it is THE website for demoscene stuff.
  - paublyrne 11y ago
    This is fantastic :) Thanks guys. I had an Amiga 600 when I was 10, but I didn't know anything about demos until much later. Wish I still had it :p
  - InclinedPlane 11y ago
    Indeed, and they achieve some amazing stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWdG413nNkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWdG413nNkI

vparikh 11y ago

"Finding people who can do that are few and far between" When I was growing up, we had to learn assembly to do anything meaning full on a C64. And 64k is all we had, and for the most part all we were ever going to get. How will the industry deal with people who can't hack/program at a low level? Its kind of scary when you have people with that much knowledge and experience leaving the industry. Especially one as young as ours. I always wonder what will happen with the next generations of programmers coming out of school - most of them get started with Python, Ruby or Java. And low level systems programming is mostly an after thought or an annoying class for most students. Congratulations to Mr. Zottarelli and a great and important career. And hopefully he will write a book about his work to help us along.

meric 11y ago
I had an ex-electrical engineering girlfriend who studied assembly as a core part of her degree. I think the low-level is covered more than you think, not in software engineering but in electrical engineering where the focus is on building platforms (transistors, CPU, Ram, hardware and assembly) to enable software to be written.
- Demiurge 11y ago
  Yes. Even part of my pretty standard CS curriculum included electrical engineering (breadboard to ALU), assembly (self hosted interpreter/vm) and language theory (C clone) courses. With a bit of time I or my classmates could build a computer from scratch, but the relevancy of this to my day job of many years as web and scientific programmer has been zero to minor. I think it gives me enough insight into many phenomena, but the lower, the less it is relative to making stuff actually happen for people. We are building up.
Demiurge 11y ago
With the growth of any science and industry, there is depth of specialization. The overall expertise is not decreasing, it is increasing, and the breadth has to give.
_fizz_buzz_ 11y ago

emersonrsantos 11y ago

Programming this thing should be an unique thing. Voyager 1 and 2 (and earlier Vikings) were not microprocessor-based. It was designed with custom-made radiation-hardened RCA CD4000, coupled with standard TTL ICs.

robinanil 11y ago

It's an amazing career and an honor to push mankind to the farthest reaches of space. Maybe we all can stand up for a moment and clap for him and his colleagues for a job well done.

codezero 11y ago

Wow. I have a PDP-11 manual with Voyager logos on it that I grabbed from a retiring physicist in the lab I used to work at – I guess I didn't realize that his retirement was part of life and reality where people move on :( Cool manual though! I've been tempted to donate it to either the computer history museum or NASA AMES (where it seems to have come from), but I kind of feel like they have dozens of these already

codezero 11y ago
I haven't dug them out in a while, turns out they're from Pioneer not Voyager, woops!

lucaspiller 11y ago

Kind of related, but what happens to the source code and designs of old spacecraft? Apart from Apollo, has NASA ever realeased any?

clockworkelf 11y ago
They released the source code for Apollo? Where can it be found? I thought they "lost" everything.

jgrahamc 11y ago

A couple of years ago I tried to interview him to get some of what he'd worked on written down. Unfortunately, I was never able to get a reply. It would be wonderful for someone to sit down and produce a video interview with him going through his work and the architecture of Voyager. If anyone knows a good way to contact him I would be very interested.

unethical_ban 11y ago
I noticed that no comment from him was in the article. I guess he may be averse to media contact.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

meesterdude 11y ago

First off, this is a beautiful article. Reading about software/devops at NASA is beyond fascinating to me, and it's crazy some of the things these guys have to do; most devops are just shaking off their training wheels, and NASA is riding a rocket powered motorbike down a ramp and over 50 cars while changing the bikes tires mid-air. But I want to reflect on something. The fact that this system is not maintainable outside of the last engineers lifetime is a failure of documentation and proper organization. I'll cut them some slack for launching a washing machine through space, but the maintainability failure is their fault; not simply the result of age or language age. Moving offices didn't help, but if you've just got papers everywhere that are so easily lost every time you move, that doesn't reflect well on the organizational front. It also speaks to how approachable a codebase should be, and what the long term benefits of proper documentation are. You never know how long the codebase you work on will be operational. All engineers should self-absolve themselves of the hit-by-a-bus problem. Still, I expect they'll learn from this. And with computers now it should be harder for them to actually lose things now. I just wanted to reflect on what the article meant to me.

spoiledtechie 11y ago
It might be their fault, but everyone who worked on that project in software were the pioneers at the time. So they didn't have the processes or knowledge to even know to document things.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  They weren't babes in the woods - processes existed even 'way back then'. They were a government project for heaven's sake! Other departments documented every iota of information about their projects (military, aeronatics, intelligence and on and on). Its amazing NASA got away with this crap for so long. I have no idea why.
  - mturmon 11y ago
    "Its amazing NASA got away with this crap for so long." This is unfair. The popular article we're talking about is trying to dramatize a milestone, but it does not say that his retirement threatens the spacecraft. It's being managed by training someone new. When you retire after many years of service, people will make laudatory comments, say you will be hard to replace (which will be true), and then move on. Incidentally, I believe he's not fully retired, because he's still listed in the employee directory here. Maybe it's set for the current work week, which for him, ends Friday.

eevilspock 11y ago

V'ger's latest Amazon purchase: God is Retired, by F'etzsche.

gopowerranger 11y ago
Non-sequitor! Does not compute!!
- eevilspock 11y ago
  You had to have seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

clockworkelf 11y ago

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon.