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=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD,
	FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Thread: 103376,382fcf8feeefdd50
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,domainid0,public,usenet
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
Path: 
 g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!k36g2000pri.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
From: "jhc0033@gmail.com" <jhc0033@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: computer language used to program Mars Lander
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:59:11 -0700 (PDT)
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Message-ID: 
 <26ec19b4-09fc-405b-a188-57b6ee5ca1a3@k36g2000pri.googlegroups.com>
References: 
 <185ee7f9-9d4f-4f49-8dbe-6b623b8a8223@c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>
	<887fc0a7-0a5a-4d2e-a9ea-eb9e32d6a818@m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com>
	<807ef880-b2ac-4ac6-877c-21274e8ff4ab@d77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>
	<g67g31$1g7$1@mail1.sbs.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 75.17.142.40
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1216882751 29550 127.0.0.1 (24 Jul 2008 06:59:11
 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:59:11 +0000 (UTC)
Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
Injection-Info: k36g2000pri.googlegroups.com; posting-host=75.17.142.40;
	posting-account=ZDEUcwoAAAAfEl68GET6fODebgE-CIe2
User-Agent: G2/1.0
X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
 rv:1.8.1.16)
	Gecko/20080702 Firefox/2.0.0.16,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)
Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:7027 comp.lang.lisp:30614
Date: 2008-07-23T23:59:11-07:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

On Jul 23, 7:43 am, Michael Oswald <muell...@gmx.net> wrote:
> I mean, I work in the space
> business (although not directly on on-board software but rather mission
> control software and testing equipment) but I haven't heard of Lisp
> usage. Would definitely be a 'nice to know' for me.

Probably because they weren't too successful. I personally think Lisp
is super-cool, but inappropriate for space (or any reliability-
sensitive work).

If I remember correctly, when they used Lisp in the probe, there was a
bug and they used Lisp's live patching and interactive debugging to
fix it, so they only missed their target by a quadrillion miles
instead of missing it by a gazillion miles.

On the other hand, the bug wouldn't have happened in the first place,
if they used a good static language. I'll let someone who knows better
fill in the details (that's why I added comp.lang.lisp to the groups)

Happy space exploration and exploitation!