Re: Ada downsizing in space

[Jeffrey Creem <jeff@thecreems.com>]

R.B. Love wrote:
> 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.
> 

Actually that is good to know. Your original e-mail led me to believe 
that you were involved in Ada but it was not clear that you knew for 
sure that other projects on ISS were 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.

Obviously I should have considered that!

> 
> 
> 
>>
>>>
>>> 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?
> 
> 

Interesting. I did not login to see it and don't have an account. I went 
back and could still get there. I use firefox with Javascript disabled 
and in that mode, you can actually see the article without logging in. 
Didn't realize I was such a talented script kiddie :)

In any case, it was just a link to an article talking about the latest 
LockMart JSF schedule slip. They do like to trash Ada (and occasionally 
open source...Though they seem to be like the rest of the Defense 
contractors and unsure if they love it or Hate it). No wonder things 
keep slipping...