The software that runs Voyager spacecrafts, onboard and on the ground, and the challenges of maintaining it.
Fluency in assembly is no longer routine training. In Dodd’s framing, younger engineers often have the capability but not the inclination.
They may consider tapping the retrocomputing community.
@amoroso this is a problem not only for NASA, there’s so much legacy systems running deep inside corporations that are still supported by same one person, who switched 8 corporations during their 40 years, without changing a desk, and they are retiring right about now….
@amoroso I'd be happy to help out, but I am not setting foot in that country of ours. Remote only baby!
I think this would be a useful approach.
There are a lot of people in the retrocomputing community which are fluent in assembly (and much lower "decks" 😄 of the systems, which recreate old systems/processors on FPGAs or rebuild CPUs with discrete elements for fun. You can do such things only with a deeper knowledge how the hardware is working.
But the number of very young people is somewhat limited.
@echopapa Right, many retrocomputing enthusiasts work on similarly complex projects if not more.
If somebody would ask me for such a type of project, I would agree (Of course, the financial terms would have to be right). I am beyond sixty and if such a project terminates in ten years or so, this would be ok for me.
When I were a lad, there weren't any training in assembly language.
I taught myself machine code from the Zilog manuals.
You tell the kids of today that...
[Monty Python, Four Yorkshiremen sketch.]
@Walrus Perhaps there was a window of time back then when basic (no pun intended) Assembly training was offered at higher education institutions.
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