>>I Think you over-estimate the capability of "our industry". I don't want to pop your bubble but the people required to make those space machines are not you t

>>I Think you over-estimate the capability of "our industry". I don't want to pop your bubble but the people required to make those space machines are not you typical web 2.0 programmer. They are the best of the best and many have half a century of experience. Also they have way more budget. Space is hard.<< I work for ESA space missions (not Rosetta). Although my colleagues are certainly well qualified, I am not sure if we are really the best of the best. (we are not the typical web 2.0 programmers though, this is certainly true :o). Usually, the software for space missions is written by electrical engineers or physicists/astronomers, who somehow specialized in software after their master or phd. Indeed, the style of that software is quite different from what is usually developed in business setups. No unnecessary complexity, just straight forward paths to the solution. We use more or less exclusively open source tools. No windows too. Works pretty well. Our results are also open source, btw. Just to answer some guys who believe, this is all military, secret and disclosed. But we also have to fight cowboy-coding and design-pattern-gurus. We usually don't have to fight software managers though. Everybody is so well qualified, that we use to discuss once a week what we do, where we want to go and then just do it. Worked very well, so far. My last mission was a huge success :o). The real innovation may indeed be done at universities and science institutes, not so much in startups and business. Which startup can afford to hire 200 scientists and invest a billion to do something new? I think there is indeed no competition on that level. But we also give a lot of tasks to industry (we have to, because of the public funding). In some cases, this caused trouble, because their main focus is to make profit and still be good enough to avoid problems. Also, they usually keep their methods secret for legal reasons. If something does not work in space, it can be hard to get the necessary information to fix the problems (while the time is ticking, because many missions have finite lifetimes). Our goal is usually 'as good as it gets, outstanding, if possible'. We can afford that and that is really cool. It doesn't work in a business setup, because it usually is expensive.