Re: New Ada space project

[Niklas Holsti <nobody@nowhere.fi>]

Anonymous Coward wrote:
> In article <421b23c0$1_1@baen1673807.greenlnk.net>, 
> Martin Dowie wrote:
> 
>>http://www.aonix.com/pr_02.22.05b.html
>>
>>Good to see that the ESA are still using Ada!

Well, some people within ESA favour Ada, others not. For example, 
some argue for using Java in the Galileo navigation system.

In my experience (from an earlier life up to about 2003), ESA 
nowadays accepts the programming language that the prime 
contractor -- usually one of the larger European space companies 
such as EADS or Alcatel-Alenia -- chooses for a project. The 
incidence of C seems to be increasing, for all the usual (poor) 
reasons.

The last project I worked on had application SW in Ada and 
low-level I/O drivers in C, "because bit manipulation would be 
much harder in Ada" according to the subcontractor for the 
computer HW and driver SW. The next project from the same prime 
contractor was to be all in C "because this is our strategic 
decision" according to the prime. I quit. (OK, I had other reasons 
too.)

> Does anyone have any idea whether it would be easy for a U.S. citizen
> with five years ADA experience to get a job at the ESA?  I'm thinking
> along the lines of one of the Holland branches (are there others?),
> but english is my only language.

If you want to write spacecraft software in Ada for ESA projects, 
you don't want a job with ESA, but with a European space software 
company, either one of the large "prime" contractors or a smaller 
subcontractor specialized in software development. ESA itself does 
very little SW development, as far as I know. They define and 
oversee projects but the projects are implemented by contractors.

Companies that do SW work for ESA projects exist in many if not 
all of the ESA member states; I know of companies in Britain, 
Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, France, Spain, 
Germany, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Austria (listed in no 
particular order). Pick your place. Most of these companies also 
do other SW work, few are exclusively space-oriented.

I can't say if U.S. citizenship would usually be an obstacle, but 
I guess this would depend on whether the company or division also 
does defence or airplane work, which is more likely for the larger 
companies. The small company that I worked at (Space Systems 
Finland Ltd, www.ssf.fi) would not have any problem with U.S. 
citizens, I believe.

For the language, all ESA project are run in English; all the 
documentation etc. is in English. Of course, your colleagues may 
prefer to speak their native language socially. Occasionally you 
may run into national space projects that merge with or become ESA 
projects, and then a knowledge of the original national language 
may be very useful. In one case, I received a SW requirements 
document that was originally in French, from a French space 
project, and was now being translated and updated for reusing the 
SW in an ESA project. At that point in time, the original 
requirements were in French and the changes were in English, 
sometimes mixing languages (and acronyms!) in the same sentence, 
which was a bit confusing (although it meant that change markers 
were not needed :-) Eventually the doc was translated completely 
into English, I believe -- I was no longer involved then.

But beware that although English is a certainty, Ada is not. Your 
first or next ESA project may be Ada, C, Java or who-knows-what.

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
       .      @       .