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In-Flight Reboot?

Posted by michael on from the no-problems-until-you-have-to-fsck dept.

steelem writes "The Washington Post is running a story about how the F-22 Raptor's software requires in-flight reboots. Apparently the 2 million line software project is 93% done. Knowing most projects I've been on, it'll stay that way for another few years."

3 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. Why is this a big deal? by Illserve · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Software like this should be able to reboot midflight without a hitch.

    Flight control software has been rebootable on the fly since the earliest days of the space program.

  2. This isn't a big deal by realmolo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The software required to run the Raptor is insanely complicated. The plane itself was ambitious, but the contorl systems are the real innovation. Give these guys a break. The fact that the thing flies at all is amazing. The fact that it does everything it was designed to do is unbelievable. So there are a few bugs to work out. That's how it goes. We're not talking about "normal" programming problems here- this is Real Life stuff.

  3. Apollo 11 by s20451 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Haven't read the article (typically of slashdot), but I do remember that the Apollo 11 computer nearly caused the first lunar landing to fail because it kept rebooting in-flight. Due to a configuration error that occurred shortly before flight, the computer repeatedly ran out of memory, but the software was designed so that the computer could reboot without catastrophe.

    You can read more here.

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