So they need someone who is greatly skilled with Fortran and Assembly languages to step in and keep the probe running. This is old-school programming at its finest; there are only 64kb of memory to work with, and this will be real-time programming , I suspect, with hard constraints.
I’m a little disappointed. Voyager is the reason I got into computers in the first place, but now after years of writing database and object-oriented programs I don’t have anywhere near the experience required to do this kind of work. I’d be willing to learn .. but I suspect "willing’ isn’t enough. "Willing†doesn’t instantly make you an expert in real time software.
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Hey, I know Fortran ... but not the real-time assembly stuff. Darn. :/
I'm too used to having "effectively infinite" memory.
Posted by: MadrocketSci at Sun Nov 1 09:59:38 2015 (GtPd7)
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I worked with Fortran 77 and assembly on a 64 KB, and I think I could pick up the maintenance of that code base. But I don't think the government would pay me enough to offset a dead-end job in the twilight of my career. It is even more imperative for me to track the bleeding edge than it was ever before. Besides, who the heck cares? Voyagers are far outside of the Solar system by now.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Nov 2 19:17:26 2015 (XOPVE)
One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes reacts to the news that Cassini has survived its plume dive.
Allow us to explain...
Saturn's moon Enceladus is known to have a global, ice-covered ocean. It also has massive geysers in its southern hemisphere that spew the contents of its ocean far above its surface.
Well, in order to find out exactly what is in its ocean NASA has turned to its only probe in the Saturnian system (Cassini). Since Cassin'is only deployable sub-probe was sent down to Titan, and since scientists have learned about all they can by spectroscopy and other remote methods, they've decided to go for broke and fly the probe on a low pass right through the plume.
UPDATE:The linked story is problematically parsimonious with the pictures. There is a better spread at the Daily Mail of all places and, of course, a bunch of super high-res pictures can be found at the New Horizon's page at NASA.
A ship is a perfect platform for a laser weapon, because it's mobile, has plenty of electric power, and potentially has things to shoot at.
The nicest thing about a laser weapon is that guidance is easy. You don't have to lead the target; you shoot exactly where you see it, because the beam is moving at the speed of light (of course).