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NASA Draws On Open Source For Shuttle Bug-Tracking

Posted by Soulskill on from the hard-to-argue-with-cheaper-and-faster dept.

thefickler writes "NASA has built a new software package to track problems with the Space Shuttle using open source tools from Mozilla. '[Alonso Vera, the lead of the Ames Human-Computer Interaction Group] wouldn't say exactly how much the new systems cost to build, but he said they were an order of magnitude cheaper than what was being used before, closer to $100,000 than the $1 million it would have cost in the past.' The Space Shuttle Endeavor launched successfully on Friday, so the new system is being used to track any problems which may crop up in the current mission. As one commentator pointed out, 'A system like this could save more than money; it could save lives.'"

6 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Hopefully this is only the beginning. by Bentov · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can only hope that more of this is to come; gotta save money someplace. Better to save my by actually saving money vs. saving money by taking it away from something else.

  2. Good Company by DynaSoar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The order of magnitude under budget sounded familiar. Jefferson Lab Accelerator made a similar statement about at least some parts of the machine when they announced they had completed building and testing it and it was ready to fire up, ahead of schedule and under budget. I remembered they used government surplus and off-the-shelf parts as much as they could, but I didn't pay attention to the software. So I looked it up. HP-UX from 1987 to 2004, Red Hat since 2004. They talk about open source as a rationale, and specifically mention the Mozilla programs: http://users.cosylab.com/~mpelko/PCaPAC08/papers/mox03.pdf

    --
    "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
  3. Re:PHLEGM already taken... by ladybugfi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well if you say in Finnish "se prakaa", you mean that it breaks. Fitting...

  4. It could have saved a lot of lives, actually by Avatraxiom · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My company (Everything Solved), made PRACA along with NASA, and in one of the first meetings, a researcher at Ames told me that if a system like PRACA had always existed at NASA, then every major mishap in NASA's history could have been avoided. -Max

    --
    Everything Solved, High-Quality Bugzilla, Perl, and Linux Services
  5. Re:What were they using before... by Avatraxiom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They were using something like 40 different systems--a different one for practically each department and contractor at NASA. Some of them were pretty much using the technological equivalent of post-it notes next to their screens, and I've been told that some were keeping track of defects using paper files. -Max

    --
    Everything Solved, High-Quality Bugzilla, Perl, and Linux Services
  6. Testing is not enough by Dark1999 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For systems such as these formal verification is very important. NASA understands that and they have a pretty strong "Reliable Software Engineering" team: http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/rse/