> "As a result, it is difficult to attract younger programmers to join the project."
Every time I read this quote I have a little bit of a laugh at this and think 'Sheesh, I could write 8-bit assembly all day long. Sign me up!'. Do the engineers there really not want to work on Voyager?
It's also really unfortunate that Voyager's source code isn't likely to be released to the general public anytime soon:
I too thought this way and I figured there were probably a lot of engineers who were comfortably well-off and would be happy to relocate and work for free on Voyager.
However, although there would be great emotional satisfaction working on such a unique project (not as great as in it's heyday though), there would not be an equal amount of intellectual satisfaction. Don't get me wrong--the current Voyager engineers are performing amazing intellectual feats. It's just that the project is nursing along the spacecraft in their final few communicating years as the power levels run out. There is probably very little programming done except to work around failing hardware. Non-emergency concerns probably mainly focus on which remaining subsystems to power down and when.
Also, the time frames for operations are really long. I believe some of the current Voyager staff work only part-time on Voyager and younger engineers probably don't want to sit around twiddling their thumbs for a good amount of time while waiting for results. (Neither do older engineers for that matter!) The quote about attracting younger programmers is from Matsumoto's paper; she also gives this account of a 2010 memory problem:
"For example, when the V2 experienced a bit flip in the FDS [computer] in 2010, it took about two weeks to recover enough to receive the engineering data, and another two weeks to receive the science data. It took another four and one-half months to adjust the timing delay caused by the anomaly and resynchronize the CCS and FDS clocks. Realigning the baseline events to the regular schedule had to be delayed even longer due to other activities competing for the resources."
We've seen a similar situation more recently with recovering from the failed FDS memory block. So, although enthusiasm is important for a Voyager programmer, patience is a virtue!
I'm guessing maybe it's the hiring side that wants people who already have $x number of years experience? it reminds me of the guy who wrote angular(?) and wanted to apply for a job but couldn't, because it required 8 years of experience and this was only 5 years after he wrote it.
Up until the 80s and early 90s, small consoles were programmed in assembly code due to performance optimizations. It never made sense to me that a space probe from the 70s would use anything but machine assembly code.
I worked for Jack Perrine at Athena Programming on the Fortran V runtime as a student intern my senior year in high school (1967). In 2011 he donated a number of manuals and listings of the compiler to the Computer History Museum:
Dusty Decks? First thing that popped into my head when I saw your name. I bookmarked it on one of my web pages back in 2004. Dang, between that and your other works, a computing rock star in our midst!
This was an absolutely incredible article with citations to everything. I don't want to think of the time it took to write it, but it answered practically every question that has been vexing me about the Voyagers for the last 30+ years. Thank you :)
Thank you! Perhaps like you trying to get the source code, I was frustrated at the lack of information and began writing a letter seeking more information to Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager project manager. I couldn't find an address to send it to, but I figured "JPL, Pasadena, California" would get it to someone who could look up her mail stop. Fortunately, I didn't need to complete the letter as things began to fall in place thanks to different bits from others on the internet and to some obscure 40- and 50-year-old papers I managed to track down. (I am grateful to the shady websites that host scientific papers for the latter. I understand the concern of professional organizations about preserving their publication rights, but at some point the information is effectively lost.) Thanks again for the kind words!
Author here--thanks for the compliment! I too had never heard of Fortran 5, which is why it kept bugging me every time I heard it mentioned in connection with Voyager over the past few years.
Hello! This was a great read, thanks. I'm slightly amazed that we've never met as far as I know. I was at the U of MD at the same time as you (late 70s) and remember the 1108 and 1106 well. Friends in the Computer Vision Lab on the fourth floor introduced me to Unix in 1979 and I never looked back. I worked at Goddard from 1995-1998 in Building 26 for the NSSDC, then again from 1998 to 2022 in building 28 (SVS) and Building 11 (DCL). My father worked there from 1971 to 1987, in Building 11. It was a wonderful place to work.
Wow! Thank you! I had dropped out of school, got interested in computers, and returned part-time in 1978, eventually getting my degree in 1981. Although I used the Univacs, I never actually saw them! In 1980-1981, I worked as an undergraduate programmer for Dr. Kanal (pattern recognition and image processing), whose office was a step across the hallway from Dr. Rosenfeld's office (who founded the Computer Vision Lab). This gave me access to the graduate student computing facilities -- no more punch cards, but the extremely diverse array of terminals at that time made me understand the need for Unix's termcap! I also did work on the new VAX they got and Dr. Kanal's PDP-11/Unix in the computing lab, but, not yet being a hacker, I didn't take as full advantage of them as I should have!
Yeah, Goddard was great. I was in Building 28 off and on from 1982-1984 and then in Building 23 from 1994-1996. Good times! Thank you for sharing your memories and your father's.
The piece documents that at least two manufacturers (Data General and Univac) marketed their extended Fortran IV compilers as "Fortran V" -- but it doesn't say whether they actually extended Fortran IV the same way. "Fortran V" wasn't the name of any official standard; the ANSI standard which more or less documented Fortran IV was officially Fortran 66, and ANSI's next version was Fortran 77.
Data General's compiler was "Fortran 5", not V. Univac and Control Data Corporation had their own Fortran Vs, but there was no relation between the two.
Every time I read this quote I have a little bit of a laugh at this and think 'Sheesh, I could write 8-bit assembly all day long. Sign me up!'. Do the engineers there really not want to work on Voyager?
It's also really unfortunate that Voyager's source code isn't likely to be released to the general public anytime soon:
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/voy...