5 ms·

>with no hope of doing an update To be fair, space probes occasionally do get software updates, eg http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/03/28/software-upgrade-at-

>with no hope of doing an update To be fair, space probes occasionally do get software updates, eg http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/03/28/software-upgrade-at-655-million-kilometres/ http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/03/28/software-upgrade-at-... In the case of the Curiosity Rover, it didn't even "ship" with the software of what it was supposed to do on Mars until it had landed there http://www.space.com/17034-mars-rover-curiosity-software-upgrade.html http://www.space.com/17034-mars-rover-curiosity-software-upg... Edit: I'm not saying this was possible in 1969. I posted this because I was genuinely curious if it was ever done.

szczys 10y ago
Yeah, I know the modern era machines have in-the-field updates, but I assume that wasn't a feature on the Lunar Module. You need a device capable of self-programming and with the state and cost of memory at the time I would think that an impossibility at the time.
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  We'll just include a little robot that can rethread the core rope memory!
lisper 10y ago
> space probes occasionally do get software updates Sure. In 2014. Not in 1969. I once had the very interesting experience of developing an in-place update for a mid-1980s-vintage spacecraft instrument: the magnetometer on the Galileo spacecraft. It used an 1802 processor with 2k bytes of memory and was programmed in Forth. The development system ran on an Apple II. The instrument developed a bad byte of RAM and so a patch had to be developed, but the Apple II that ran the Forth compiler had long since been decommissioned. (It was nine years between when the spacecraft was completed and when it arrived at Jupiter, three of which were a delay caused by the Challenger explosion.) I ended up writing a complete 1802 emulator and new Forth development environment that was able to compile the original source code and reproduce what was then running on the instrument. That code ran in Common Lisp on a Macintosh II. Using that new development system, I produced a patch, which was only about a dozen bytes long. It was quite an inexpensive project by NASA standards (took about three months from start to finish with just me working on it) but the cost per byte of output code was pretty staggering :-)
- outworlder 10y ago
  > I once had the very interesting experience of developing an in-place update for a mid-1980s-vintage spacecraft instrument: the magnetometer on the Galileo spacecraft. Sigh. Reading this at the start of my workday is not doing wonders to my morale. Only tangentially related to the article, but since you are commenting here, I'd like to thank you for the "Lisping at JPL". I've read it several times, which caused me to start collecting all the info I could get on the Remote Agent. I couldn't find that much though. Surely such a project should have generated way more research papers than it did? Since it doesn't seem to be used anymore, where's the source code? It feels like it was killed with fire. I wonder if current generation spacecraft now have something even half as powerful as the DS1 REPL...
  - lisper 10y ago
    > Reading this at the start of my workday is not doing wonders to my morale I'm very sorry to hear that. Would it help if I told you how my life sucks now? ;-) > Surely such a project should have generated way more research papers than it did? Since it doesn't seem to be used anymore, where's the source code? I have no idea. I strongly suspect that the RAX code was not preserved, though I could be wrong. You might want to contact the JPL public-relations office and ask them. It is hard to appreciate just how chaotic the entire DS1 project was. The mission was trying to do things that had never been done before on a budget and schedule that was a tiny fraction of anything that had come before. And then RAX was a little cauldron of chaos within the larger chaos. We were a team forced to work together by largely political rather than technological considerations. We were using CVS for version control (this was the mid-90's remember). It was all we could do to come up with something that worked at all. It was very stressful, and when it was over, everyone just wanted to distance themselves from it as fast as possible. There was no money for anyone to properly catalog and archive the code (AFAIK).
    - outworlder 10y ago
      > I'm very sorry to hear that. Would it help if I told you how my life sucks now? ;-) Not at all. It would only increase the (perceived!) overall suckyness of the universe :) > I have no idea. I strongly suspect that the RAX code was not preserved, though I could be wrong. You might want to contact the JPL public-relations office and ask them. I didn't know that such an attempt could have a greater than zero chance of success. Let's see how that goes. > And then RAX was a little cauldron of chaos within the larger chaos. And yet, it flew! > It was very stressful, and when it was over, everyone just wanted to distance themselves from it as fast as possible. Uh oh. That's far worse than having no budget for archival.

szczys 10y ago

Yeah, I know the modern era machines have in-the-field updates, but I assume that wasn't a feature on the Lunar Module. You need a device capable of self-programming and with the state and cost of memory at the time I would think that an impossibility at the time.

Bromskloss 10y ago
We'll just include a little robot that can rethread the core rope memory!

lisper 10y ago

> space probes occasionally do get software updates Sure. In 2014. Not in 1969. I once had the very interesting experience of developing an in-place update for a mid-1980s-vintage spacecraft instrument: the magnetometer on the Galileo spacecraft. It used an 1802 processor with 2k bytes of memory and was programmed in Forth. The development system ran on an Apple II. The instrument developed a bad byte of RAM and so a patch had to be developed, but the Apple II that ran the Forth compiler had long since been decommissioned. (It was nine years between when the spacecraft was completed and when it arrived at Jupiter, three of which were a delay caused by the Challenger explosion.) I ended up writing a complete 1802 emulator and new Forth development environment that was able to compile the original source code and reproduce what was then running on the instrument. That code ran in Common Lisp on a Macintosh II. Using that new development system, I produced a patch, which was only about a dozen bytes long. It was quite an inexpensive project by NASA standards (took about three months from start to finish with just me working on it) but the cost per byte of output code was pretty staggering :-)

outworlder 10y ago
> I once had the very interesting experience of developing an in-place update for a mid-1980s-vintage spacecraft instrument: the magnetometer on the Galileo spacecraft. Sigh. Reading this at the start of my workday is not doing wonders to my morale. Only tangentially related to the article, but since you are commenting here, I'd like to thank you for the "Lisping at JPL". I've read it several times, which caused me to start collecting all the info I could get on the Remote Agent. I couldn't find that much though. Surely such a project should have generated way more research papers than it did? Since it doesn't seem to be used anymore, where's the source code? It feels like it was killed with fire. I wonder if current generation spacecraft now have something even half as powerful as the DS1 REPL...
- lisper 10y ago
  > Reading this at the start of my workday is not doing wonders to my morale I'm very sorry to hear that. Would it help if I told you how my life sucks now? ;-) > Surely such a project should have generated way more research papers than it did? Since it doesn't seem to be used anymore, where's the source code? I have no idea. I strongly suspect that the RAX code was not preserved, though I could be wrong. You might want to contact the JPL public-relations office and ask them. It is hard to appreciate just how chaotic the entire DS1 project was. The mission was trying to do things that had never been done before on a budget and schedule that was a tiny fraction of anything that had come before. And then RAX was a little cauldron of chaos within the larger chaos. We were a team forced to work together by largely political rather than technological considerations. We were using CVS for version control (this was the mid-90's remember). It was all we could do to come up with something that worked at all. It was very stressful, and when it was over, everyone just wanted to distance themselves from it as fast as possible. There was no money for anyone to properly catalog and archive the code (AFAIK).
  - outworlder 10y ago
    > I'm very sorry to hear that. Would it help if I told you how my life sucks now? ;-) Not at all. It would only increase the (perceived!) overall suckyness of the universe :) > I have no idea. I strongly suspect that the RAX code was not preserved, though I could be wrong. You might want to contact the JPL public-relations office and ask them. I didn't know that such an attempt could have a greater than zero chance of success. Let's see how that goes. > And then RAX was a little cauldron of chaos within the larger chaos. And yet, it flew! > It was very stressful, and when it was over, everyone just wanted to distance themselves from it as fast as possible. Uh oh. That's far worse than having no budget for archival.