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> 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 spa

> 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.
  - lisper 10y ago
    > And yet, it flew! Yes, it did. And it even mostly worked. And even when it didn't work it let us demonstrate in-situ debugging and repair, which had also never been done before (and AFAIK has not been done since). > That's far worse than having no budget for archival. Indeed. :-(
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > I'm very sorry to hear that. Would it help if I told you how my life sucks now? ;-) I'm sure it does ;) However: back in those days, computing skills were in mad demand (much more so than today, impressions to the contrary notwithstanding) and almost everything that you could do with a computer turned out to be something interesting and new. With all the 'base' problems solved and the enormous resources available today the creativity and joy have definitely dropped a level or two. That doesn't mean that it isn't possible to derive some satisfaction of the creation of something but it is definitely harder to come by than it was in the days past. Creativity explodes when there are more constraints, we are now for all practical purposes almost unconstrained.

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.
- lisper 10y ago
  > And yet, it flew! Yes, it did. And it even mostly worked. And even when it didn't work it let us demonstrate in-situ debugging and repair, which had also never been done before (and AFAIK has not been done since). > That's far worse than having no budget for archival. Indeed. :-(
jacquesm 10y ago
> I'm very sorry to hear that. Would it help if I told you how my life sucks now? ;-) I'm sure it does ;) However: back in those days, computing skills were in mad demand (much more so than today, impressions to the contrary notwithstanding) and almost everything that you could do with a computer turned out to be something interesting and new. With all the 'base' problems solved and the enormous resources available today the creativity and joy have definitely dropped a level or two. That doesn't mean that it isn't possible to derive some satisfaction of the creation of something but it is definitely harder to come by than it was in the days past. Creativity explodes when there are more constraints, we are now for all practical purposes almost unconstrained.