Software Bug Causes Soyuz To Land Way Off

howhardcanitbetocrea writes "A mysterious software fault in the new guidance computer of the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft was the cause of the high-anxiety off-course landing over the weekend, according to NASA sources.' Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release."

Comments

In Soviet Russia...

[TheVidiot]

ahhh... it's just too obvious!

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Scoria]

No, it isn't. I haven't ever observed this joke. Is this intended to be humorous? In Soviet Russia, what? I'm confused. :-)

Great...

[DCowern]

Now we have frikken astronauts beating up on poor anonymous software developpers... quoth the article

There was also the real possibility of crew error, and on Sunday, the head of the corporation that builds and operates the Soyuz spacecraft, Yuriy Semyonov, suggested that "one of the Americans" had pushed the backup-mode activation button. Bowersox was the only American who had any active role in the descent (it was astronaut Donald Pettit's job to follow the checklists), and he denied touching the button -- which, he joked, was being guarded carefully by Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin. "We don't think we did anything to cause that to happen," he later said to a NASA press official.

Yeah... right... if I had a nickle for every time I heard an end user say something similar to that ("I swear I didn't touch anything... it just... crashed..." or "The files just... disappeared! Gone! Disappeared! I didn't do anything!") I'd have...well...a lot of nickles...

/me mumbles bittlerly and goes back into his development hole :P

Destructive Testing

[peacefinder]

"Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release."

Well, let's hope it stays in beta. Real world testing would be a major bummer!