NASA Releases 2017-2018 Catalog of Software For Free (nasa.gov)
mspohr writes: Eureka Magazine has a story about the latest NASA 2017-2018 software catalog. From the report: "NASA has released its 2017-2018 software catalogue free of charge to the public, without any royalty or copyright fees. This third edition of the publication has contributions from all the agency's centers on data processing/storage, business systems, operations, propulsion and aeronautics. It includes many of the tools NASA uses to explore space and broaden our understanding of the universe. 'The software catalogue is our way of supporting the innovation economy by granting access to tools used by today's top aerospace professionals to entrepreneurs, small businesses, academia and industry,' said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in Washington. 'Access to these software codes has the potential to generate tangible benefits that create jobs, earn revenue and save lives.'" Amazing amount of quality software... it IS rocket science. Further reading (and digesting): TechCrunch
With improved tts
Eureka Magazine has a story about the latest NASA 2017-2018 software catalog. From the report: "NASA has released its 2017-2018 software catalogue free of charge to the public, without any royalty or copyright fees.
Seems to me the software was already paid for by me. Or does NASA think their budget grows on a money tree in space?
NASA is tax funded.
We have no choice but to pay.
The State decides how much we pay.
NASA produces and now publishes software. It is not clear how efficiently produced that software was, or what the actual need for it is, and in any case, none of us were asked or had a meaningful choice in paying for it, so it's irrelevant.
I would just like to say thank you, and I hope that other government agencies worldwide contribute equally. Being born when astronauts were taking the first steps towards the moon I have always held NASA in high regard and it is fabulous that they keep impressing many decades later.
...the Autonomous Precision Landing Navigation System might come in handy. It combines camera images with elevation maps using methods “employed by cruise missiles for decades,” although you don’t hear a lot about safe landings by cruise missiles."
(From the linked article)
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
You can check out what is publicly/globally available on github: https://github.com/nasa
On their main software page, there is a LOT of stuff that is by request only but github is all the easy to get stuff.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Release its shit for free a la open source it
Seen it before, see it now, will see it again
This is why TRUMP is a must to make America Great Again because if you ain't touchin dicks with a Russin you just ain't doin it right
they could take some of the coders and tell them to make a proper fucking website. They have some nice stuff available but jeez.
now, if you guys at nasa could just adjust the heat in arizona to stay at a comfortable 85 degrees year around, i would be happy. thanks in advance.
I remember the first time I had to deal with satellite telemetry. While I had to write code to process the data, I used GNUPlot for visualization. Saved a ton of time. Of course there is no free software. Someone pays for it, to someone donates the time. In government we pay for it, just like we pay for everything. This is why the freedom of information act makes so much sense, and should not be ignored arbitrarily. We pay for the work, and we have a right to know if and how that work is being done.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Is there a metric to imperial units conversion tool?
Woot! Now I'll finally get a decent score in Kerbal Space Program!
Their collection of 3D models is nice: https://github.com/nasa/NASA-3...
Someone who has developed and released software at NASA here..
Your project funding was to develop software for your specific (typically niche) application to meet a fairly narrow need. You probably weren't funded to develop a system and build process for multiple platforms, complete design documentation, etc. It got the job done, everyone who funded you was happy, and now, you're willing to "throw it over the wall" to the public in essentially "use as is, where is" kind of thing.
The other issue is one of actually doing the distribution - Once the software is done and delivered to your (internal) customer, you're off on another job, with a different charge number. 2 years from now, a request comes in for that software, and you have no charge number to go and scrounge up docs, run them through the required export controls and proprietary information reviews, make any changes needed, etc. Typically, the raw code is easier to review and get through the process, but the design docs may incorporate information that is export controlled, or incorporates proprietary information from a vendor. And even if it doesn't have that, it still needs the review to make sure it doesn't.
And then, there's another one. A lot of this software is essentially "one-off" and the docs, software, change logs, etc. aren't necessarily consistent, or pretty, or something you'd be proud to show off to the world. So, combined with the lack of a charge number, the incentive for the original author to go through and "clean it all up" is starting to get pretty minimal.
Is there even ONE slashdotter who's going to comment on the **contents** of the catalog instead of bitching about governments and copyright issues (of which they most likely know very little)?
I'd be much more interested in reviews/ ratings of software tools for various tasks than in what NASA allegedly is or isn't keeping from the public.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
https://archive.org/details/NasaSpaceFoodLiveInterviews
It would be great to find some well written NASA applications that can serve as examples for learning languages.
Please let is know if you have found some gems in the NASA catalog.
I was wondering what languages they used and found this interesting post:
"Armstrong Flight Research Center uses C, C++, C#, Fortran, MATLAB, Python and other languages, based on their specific software requirements. Some of their software development involves legacy systems. Some of it involves spacecraft systems, and some of it involves ground control systems. The control rooms run custom software written in C, C++ and C#, running on Dell computers."
"ADA is seldom used anywhere in the military-industrial complex anymore, probably at least in part due to the Ariane 5 accident. There's a wide variety of software development that takes place at NASA, some of which involves exotic embedded systems."
From http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/240294/what-language-do-companies-like-nasa-use-to-create-their-applications
I'm suspicious of the second paragraph, that the Ariane 5 software bug resulted in ADA being used less, especially since the programmers had turned off ADA checking features for a critical variable. ADA is supposed to help write more reliable code. However, the code for the Mars explorers Spirit and Opportunity was written primarily in C.
Such a phrase could only be uttered by a foreigner or a willfully ignorant amateur coder (e.g., physicists, aerospace engineers, possibly EEs, etc.) This code may work (for some definition of the word, under undocumented ideal circumstances) but it is surely not production quality software you'd want to bet your money on. There's a reason these people need to be so smart, it's so they can fix each other's shitty, broken, unmaintainable FORTAN 77 code that can only be understood by the person who wrote it, and then only for a few weeks.