

Ask HN: Ideal language for running the systems of an Orion class spaceship? - jharohit

In science fiction tv, movies and books we often see and hear about systems and sub-systems working together to run the entire ship. And almost always there are scenarios where the &quot;OS&quot; for the ship allows quick hacks to re-purpose modules or re-route data&#x2F;power across areas.<p>Being a developer, I have always wondered whether there is a language currently that can withstand the rigours of deep space? Or it is something yet to be invented?<p>Such a programming language should have certain features - fast execution times, versatility, good driver support for hardware components, ability to script in, baked in support for messaging,etc.
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dandrews
An oldie but a goodie: "Lisping at JPL".

[http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html](http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-
lisp.html)

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jharohit
well it does mention how they had 'political pressures' to move to C++. I
believe C++ is great when you are talking about performance, something which
is absolutely critical when you are talking about calculating minute
adjustments to trajectories on the fly really fast.

But the programming language we are looking for must be a 'hackable' one -
something for you which you can hack together a fix or bypass fairly easily
and quickly in case of situations encountered in interplanetary space. C++ is
definitely not something I see capable of achieving that.

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jharohit
I have found that the International Space Station Flight Software Guidance,
Navigation, and Control uses 'Ada' [http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-
project-summary.html](http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-
summary.html)

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jharohit
Seems like ESA has put its money on MicroPython
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699798)

