From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,f096ebb5dcac664d X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news2.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.banetele.no!uio.no!newsfeed1.funet.fi!newsfeeds.funet.fi!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!zebra1.gotanet.se!oden.abc.se!bskb From: bskb@m.a.c.com.invalid (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Bjarne_B=E4ckstr=F6m?=) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ariane 5 Failure from 1996 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:01:35 +0200 Organization: Design & Programming, Industrial Automation Message-ID: <1j2ngoq.3f6swczz3djgN%bskb@m.a.c.com.invalid> References: <851f477d-c5a4-4c87-b930-4a47ba508579@h8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 80.68.122.36.karlsborgsenergi.se X-Trace: oden.abc.se 1247241694 24499 80.68.122.36 (10 Jul 2009 16:01:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@abc.se NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:01:34 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: MacSOUP/S-2.8.2 (Mac OS X version 10.4.11 (x86)) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:6949 Date: 2009-07-10T18:01:35+02:00 List-Id: Martin wrote: > On Jul 10, 3:53 pm, John McCabe wrote: > > Dear All > > > > The other day, some geezer who was presenting to me claimed that > > someone had carried out an analysis to show that, had the Ariane 5 > > software been written in C, the first launch would have succeeded. > > > > Are any of you aware of this claim and have information to debunk > > this? > > > > Thanks > > John > > Not aware of this claim and it's entirely hypothetical - you could > argue that if the C programmers had been 'average' C programmers, it > might not have got to the launch pad! > > My understanding of the Ariane pretty slim but if Wikipedia is > accurate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5) then it seems likely > that the same error would have occurred, as my reading is that it was > the deliberate removal of Ada checks that led to the 32-bit Float > being assigned to a 16-bit value, i.e. that part was C-in-Ada-syntax. The full report can be found here: --