NASA Releases Classic Software To Public Domain

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday October 26, 2001 @02:51AM from the someone-quick-find-a-moon-lander dept.

xpccx writes in with a bit from NewsBytes, "NASA turned 43 this month and marked the occasion by releasing more than 200 of its scientific and engineering applications for public use. The modular Fortran programs can be modified, compiled and run on most Linux platforms." The software can be found at OpenChannelSoftware.com. At long last I am ready to prepare my own space mission. I wonder if a whiskey barrel is gonna be air tight after I launch it/me into space with a trebuchet. (It's this sort of unconventional thinking that should get me my job at NASA. Or at least get me put to sleep).

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Sounds Good by dragons_flight · 2001-10-26 03:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

The NASA code used on space missions is some of the most throughly debugged anywhere. Can't afford a blue screen of death when lives are actually on the line. Also, you have to be pretty fault tolerant in case cosmic rays or other external phenomena are messing with your data.

Of course the drawback is that most NASA code is too specialized to be of general interest.