Re: Ada downsizing in space

[R.B. Love <rblove@airmail.net>]

On 2007-02-18 08:58:33 -0600, Jeffrey Creem <jeff@thecreems.com> said:

> R. B. Love wrote:
>> It was very pleasant reading the recent thread about "Ada is popular 
>> after all" but local events make me think other wise.
>> 
>> I have to believe that the International Space Station (ISS) was one of 
>> the biggest Ada projects in the world, employing people in several 
>> nations writing Ada.  NASA has decreed that there must be a 15% 
>> reduction in spending on ISS and Boeing responded Friday with layoff 
>> notices going to between 140 and 180 people.  A good many of them are 
>> Ada programmers.
> 
> 
> Do you have first hand knowledge that ISS has a lot of Ada.

Well, as I said, I expect to remain hired for 5 years maintaining that 
Ada software that makes up the ISS.  Let me see, there are between 
45-50 flight computers on board the ISS on various US components.  They 
are all programmed in Ada.   I believe the Russian flight computers use 
C.  The onboard, hand held PCs are mostly C/Linux.  The large trainers 
for ISS use Ada almost exclusively.  That was another 1-2 dozen 
programmers.  Some of the foreign trainers use Ada.


> NASA appears to have abandoned Ada around 10 years ago (That is not to 
> say that nothing was being done in Ada -- just most high visibility 
> things that you'd hear about were not done in Ada). I think it was part 
> of their Better, Faster, Cheaper (Choose any 0 of them) plan.

ISS was under way before then.



> 
>> 
>> All the work I see being done for CEV is C or C++.  LockMart, the same 
>> people who spiked Ada for with the Secretary of the Air Force on SBIRS, 
>> seems determined to make everything C++.
> 
> Sounds about right http://www.defense-aerospace.com/produit/40968_us.html

This requires a login so I can't see it.  Care to summarize?