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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kennel@msr.epm.ornl.gov (Matt Kennel) Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada Date: 1996/02/22 Message-ID: <4gis82$cqi@stc06.ctd.ornl.gov>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 140689860 references: <4etcmm$lpd@nova.dimensional.com> followup-to: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, TN newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1996-02-22T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Jon S Anthony (jsa@organon.com) wrote: > In article kst@thomsoft.com (Keith Thompson) writes: > > The story that a Venus probe was destroyed by a Fortran error has been > > widely propagated, but it's inaccurate. The probe in question was > > Mariner 1, which was destroyed 4 minutes after launch on July 22, 1962. > So, does this mean that there are _no_ confirmed cases of probes lost due > software? If so, I'm impressed as software has just plain _got_ to be > the weakest link in the chain. 1/2 :-) I believe there were software problems with the Phobos Mars probes; improper instructions were sent which caused a terminal destabilization and loss of contact. And unlike NASA probes there was not a "failsafe" tracking mode that tried to find the sun again and beam back to earth if it got totally confused. Apparently there was a division between the "engineering" organization running the spacecraft bus and the Space Research Institute (IKI in russian) who were actually running the instruments and doing the science. Bottom line was that IKI thought the other people were totally incompetent and they should have run the whole thing themselves. > [neat info snipped...] > /Jon > -- > Jon Anthony > Organon Motives, Inc. > 1 Williston Road, Suite 4 > Belmont, MA 02178 > 617.484.3383 > jsa@organon.com