NASA Avoids "Happy New Year" On Shuttle

ClickOnThis noted that NASA is actually avoiding a Shuttle in Space over New Years. It says "The worry is that shuttle computers aren't designed to make the change from the 365th day of the old year to the first day of the new year while in flight. NASA has never had a shuttle in space December 31 or January 1. 'We've just never had the computers up and going when we've transitioned from one year to another,' said Discovery astronaut Joan Higginbotham. 'We're not really sure how they're going to operate.'" You may notice some deja vu while reading this story. Sorry. Not much happens on Sundays :)

Comments

Not again...

[denttford]

To paraphrase the a late Romulan Senator...

It's a DUUUUPE.

So, to forestall any of the previous idiotic comments;

• yes, NASA has known of this for a while;
• it's considered a limitation, not a bug;
• no, none of your two second psuedo code hacks are of any value or insight,
• because the ~450,000 lines of operational software is written for 0 bugs and in HAL/S (so thanks for the quick C++ hacks, they are useless),
• calendar math is trickier than it looks; many date libs are replete with hacks and magic numbers
• you are not a better programmer than the guys and gals who write this stuff, and Lockheed has quite a bit of experience in doing this stuff.

Oh, and for the most ridiculous of stuff: Linux is not an option for critical shuttle systems; it is not a reliable RTOS - when you are orbiting at 18,000mph, a 1 second error puts you miles off course, though Debian was used at least once in monitoring an onboard experiment.

Can we all move on?