NASA to take lessons from the SpaceX software development approach

[Bradley Prior]

NASA to take lessons from the SpaceX software development approach

NASA plans to use lessons from SpaceX’s approach to software development after a failed test flight by a Boeing Co. craft showed the flaws of more traditional procedures, agency officials said. [Bloomberg]

 

[system32]

Brook's law - "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later"

 

[garyc]

From the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/science/boeing-starliner-nasa.html

After a couple of rounds of investigation and some soul-searching, NASA and Boeing believe that they have identified what went wrong during a troubled test flight of an uncrewed Boeing spacecraft designed to carry NASA astronauts.

In addition to the software errors that slipped through undetected and were not fixed before the spacecraft was launched in December, NASA officials admitted that decades of working with Boeing gave them a level of trust. As a result, it might not have been paying attention to the company as closely as it should have while it was also placing more scrutiny on SpaceX, which also built a capsule for carrying people to the space station.

“We were, I would say, a little more used to the Boeing process,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said during a news conference on Tuesday. “It’s one that we have used in the past on successful NASA programs like space shuttle and the International Space Station.”

Seems similar to the trust that the FAA placed in Boeing during their B737 development.

From UPI: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/20...ward-new-Boeing-capsule-flight/5891594139175/

Boeing has acknowledged that one of its biggest problems with Starliner was a decision to break up tests of its flight software into segments, rather than run "end-to-end" tests from liftoff to docking at the station, and from undocking to landing.

So basically Boeing only did the system verification activities and omitted the the validation. NASA is big on their system engineering principles and therefore this is no small omission. No wonder the trust is gone.

Meanwhile over at SpaceX: https://www.rankred.com/what-hardware-software-does-spacex-use-to-power-its-rockets/

Moreover, SpaceX uses continuous integration to test the entire code being written by programmers automatically. In fact, they have test stands bolted on all Falcon 9 components so they can simulate a whole flight to figure out potential problems.

This means they are carrying out a certain amount of the validation processes while still developing the code using an "iron bird" type system.

 

[UrBaN963]

TL;DR:

When you test all the software you find the bugs. When you skimp, you blow up.

Who knew?

 

[BigAl-sa]

NASA to take lessons from the SpaceX software development approach

NASA plans to use lessons from SpaceX’s approach to software development after a failed test flight by a Boeing Co. craft showed the flaws of more traditional procedures, agency officials said. [Bloomberg]

Software and Boeing in the same sentence?

I have a vague recollection of something called Maxx...