This is my first post on this platform. Shoutout to Jordan Singer for putting me on.

I want to open up a dialogue about a tech industry within the tech industry. Aerospace.

A lot of you have seen the kick ass stuff Space X is doing and it’s really inspiring. But, I don’t think you guys understand the magnitude of how great the engineering actually is.

A lot of our customers or in house leadership wants custom software on proven hardware. This means hardware that has flown in certain orbits and has passed a rigorous qualification process, such as fault and radiation tolerant. A lot of this hardware is very old. So old that the modern day software is written in C 98/C++ 03. Yes, you read that correctly C 98/C++ 03.

Depending on the mission class, there is no such thing as dynamic memory allocation. If dynamic memory allocation is allowed it is only done at initialization (on boot up) of the spacecraft.

For example, Space X Dragon is human certified, Mission Class A. It’s software and hardware have gone through NASA’s strictest qualification process. That guarantees no dynamic memory allocation past boot up. So all of the Guidance, Navigation and Control algorithms have been developed to fit within a certain memory space.

The booster for example receives data every microsecond/millisecond at roughly 3,000 Miles per Hour to do an adjustment burn with the thrusters. This all has to be done in realtime without any other processes like fault management conflicting the calculation thread.

Sounds like simple math sure, but I haven’t even brought in the environment disruptions such as wind and rain. Those play in the calculations as well.

Bottom line, the aerospace industry is doing ground breaking things with 20 year old hardware and software. I can only imagine what we could do if we started using true modern day hardware and software. Hell, Elon and Space X could have already landed humans on Mars.