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NASA Space Mozilla Software The Internet IT

NASA Draws On Open Source For Shuttle Bug-Tracking 83

Posted by Soulskill from the hard-to-argue-with-cheaper-and-faster dept.
thefickler writes "NASA has built a new software package to track problems with the Space Shuttle using open source tools from Mozilla. '[Alonso Vera, the lead of the Ames Human-Computer Interaction Group] wouldn't say exactly how much the new systems cost to build, but he said they were an order of magnitude cheaper than what was being used before, closer to $100,000 than the $1 million it would have cost in the past.' The Space Shuttle Endeavor launched successfully on Friday, so the new system is being used to track any problems which may crop up in the current mission. As one commentator pointed out, 'A system like this could save more than money; it could save lives.'"
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NASA Draws On Open Source For Shuttle Bug-Tracking More

NASA Draws On Open Source For Shuttle Bug-Tracking

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  • They're already using it (Score:5, Funny)

    by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Sunday November 16, 2008 @11:32AM (#25777547) Homepage
    Bug number one with the Space Shuttle is that "Microsoft has a majority market share in space travel".

    • Re:They're already using it (Score:4, Funny)

      by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @11:37AM (#25777571)

      you didn't think the shuttle columbia blew up because of foam hitting a tile did you?

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        you didn't think the shuttle columbia blew up because of foam hitting a tile did you?

        Of course he doesn't! But the tile fell off because of Microsoft! If the design engineers weren't using Microsoft products somewhere in their lives (even if it was just MS Money at home), the accident would never have happened!

        Oh yeah, it was also Bush's fault, too.

        This is Slashdot after all.

        • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          See, comments like yours are dangerous and hate-speech. That's why we need to implement an Extended Fairness Doctrine everywhere to supress the expression of divisive thought- er. Protect The Children. That's what Change is all about, after all.

        • Re:They're already using it (Score:5, Insightful)

          by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @03:27PM (#25779155)

          Both Columbia and Challenger failed because management overruled engineering and ordered that schedule be maintained in spite of quality concerns. Launch it now, land it now, release it now.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by tuxgeek ( 872962 )
        Never underestimate the power of the BSOD

  • Hopefully this is only the beginning. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bentov ( 993323 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @11:42AM (#25777591)
    I can only hope that more of this is to come; gotta save money someplace. Better to save my by actually saving money vs. saving money by taking it away from something else.

    • It'll save money sure, but I think it is a huge stretch to say that open source bug tracking will save lives. It will do no such thing.

      • If it's not going to make the shuttle safer to fly, why did they bother developing it?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by pnewhook ( 788591 )

          RTA - it was to replace a large number of proprietary databases spread across numerous subcontractors with a single common solution hosted locally at NASA. It saves costs and time, but not lives.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by khallow ( 566160 )
            I disagree. That sounds like a big lifesaver right there. At the least, it'll help catch sets of problems that are synergistic. For example, if you have some avionics issue that is sensitive to excess vibration from the SRBs, it'd be helpful to easily access the SRB problem databases and see what vibration problems they currently have. That may tip the decision from "we'll let it go for this launch since it hasn't been a problem before" to "the latest SRBs have some new problems that affect this issue, we b

            • Well since that is a completely unrealistic example that would never happen, you cant really use it to justify your position.

              As a subcontractor to NASA I dont really see how centralizing the databases provides any life savings benefit. Time and money yes obviously, life saving, no.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by khallow ( 566160 )
                I'm sorry, but I can't tell, if you're being sarcastic or just obtuse. I would, of course, disagree with the characterization of my example as "completely unrealistic". The point was as long as you have completely different issue tracking software for complex systems that have to work together, you have ways to introduce fatal problems through unexpected interactions between issues on disjoint tracking systems.

                • I'm not being sarcastic or obtuse. I'm being realistic.

                  It's an unrealistic example because the subsystems simply do not work that way. The system is designed, and all the subsystems (supplied by contractors) get a very detailed and specific list of requirements. You have to meet all the requirements or you simply are not allowed to integrate your system. So when the avionics company got the contract for the electronics, they would have received a list of requirements that included the launch vibrations tha

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by khallow ( 566160 )
                    Ok, I see what you're saying. So even with a unified tracking system, they'll still compartmentalize project development in this way.

                  • In space there is no such thing as "introduce fatal problems through unexpected interactions between issues". The programs are setup in such a manner to not allow that to happen.

                    Like the strength of the shuttle wing's leading edge, and the weight of falling foam? You'd think they'd have been more careful if they expected that to happen.

                    • There's always an unknown. However if they had the foam falling off in the same database as the shuttle wing design, the shuttle accident would have still happened.

                      When the first foam fell off the situation was analyzed and deemed to be acceptable. The analysis and conclusions were obviously wrong and a centralized database wouldn't have changed anything.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrMr ( 219533 )
        It will save lives because thanks to this particular change no cheaper components need to be used in other parts of the vessel to achieve the next round of price cuts.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by AmberBlackCat ( 829689 )
      I can only hope when somebody files a bug for something like say, "shuttle fires unreliably under ice conditions" nobody closes the bug and sets the status to "WORKS4ME".

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by DiegoBravo ( 324012 )

        Despite the (European) Ariane, the most tragic NASA's episodes were not directly related to software. Even with the high business software project failure rate, the software in the space ships has proved very reliable.

        I think people is biased to feel the software as a intractable mess because of the intractable requirement dynamics in business projects. BTW, never complains that the hardware can be so bad too.

    • Eh I'm not so sure. Everyone knows how rigorously the military requires software to be audited for flight control systems.. and this is the space shuttle. A bit of a step up. So it may be easier to write everything from scratch, testing rigorously as you go, instead of handing developers an unfamiliar codebase and making them try to make it meet code robustness requirements.

      I love free software but I don't think volunteer developers in an anarchist programming environment have a place in the development of

      • Re:Hopefully this is only the beginning. (Score:5, Funny)

        by EpsCylonB ( 307640 ) <eps&epscylonb,com> on Sunday November 16, 2008 @02:13PM (#25778673) Homepage
        I love free software but I don't think volunteer developers in an anarchist programming environment have a place in the development of a $2 billion system at the absolute pinnacle of aerospace design complexity.

        Yeah but it will fine for the space shuttle. [ducks]

      • Re:Hopefully this is only the beginning. (Score:5, Informative)

        by cyclone96 ( 129449 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @03:09PM (#25779039)

        I understand your point, however this particular software is basically a system for tracking vehicle "funnies" on the ground, it's not something that is in the loop of the vehicle flight software or something used to make critical decisions. The old system is pretty dated and unwieldy to use (I've used it, I work for NASA). We're obligated to try out cheaper alternatives to custom code to see if it works for us without compromising what we are trying to do.

        Sometimes it does work for us - the Mission Control Center workstations and the onboard command and control laptops on the Space Station were all recently converted to Red Hat. It is in many ways better than the old proprietary unix solutions because with the source it's easy to do our own mods to the software. We still test the daylights out of it since that is critical software, but it's a lot easier to support since we have the source code and can do our own bug in-house bug investigations, patch it, or rip out things we don't want/need.

    • Frankly, I do not think that it has something to do with money saving.

      I have seen that many times in past when people quoted costs only as justification to switch to better system.

      And frankly, systems like Bugzilla, Mantis are magnitude better compared to commercial offerings. I have used number of "state of the art" issue tracking systems - both OSS and commercials - and OSS options are plainly better. Commercial tools win against OSS options only because they have simpler management tools what mana

  • The name of the system sure sounds as from a dilbert strip: "Problem Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action (PRACA)"
  • Post-its next to their screens?
    • Yes.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Avatraxiom ( 602424 )
      They were using something like 40 different systems--a different one for practically each department and contractor at NASA. Some of them were pretty much using the technological equivalent of post-it notes next to their screens, and I've been told that some were keeping track of defects using paper files. -Max
      • Shit, I though I was just kidding. Reality rears its ugly head.
      • To clarify, this comment was more me attempting to be amusing than an actual factual statement. I suspect there were actually many advanced systems in use and I really actually have no idea what systems were being used. -Max

  • Good Company (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @11:55AM (#25777659) Journal

    The order of magnitude under budget sounded familiar. Jefferson Lab Accelerator made a similar statement about at least some parts of the machine when they announced they had completed building and testing it and it was ready to fire up, ahead of schedule and under budget. I remembered they used government surplus and off-the-shelf parts as much as they could, but I didn't pay attention to the software. So I looked it up. HP-UX from 1987 to 2004, Red Hat since 2004. They talk about open source as a rationale, and specifically mention the Mozilla programs: http://users.cosylab.com/~mpelko/PCaPAC08/papers/mox03.pdf [cosylab.com]

    • Re:Good Company (Score:5, Informative)

      by invisiblerhino ( 1224028 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @12:46PM (#25778007)
      A lot of science uses open source tools anyway, so this is only news in that it'll draw the public's attention to it. At CERN, the data analysis package (ATHENA) I worked on had a Python front end, used gnu tools (gcc, gdb), expressly encouraged physicists to use valgrind etc. I've forgotten how bug tracking worked, but I'm pretty sure it was something like Bugzilla. I'm not sure about the status (open source or not) of the full analysis package, but other stuff to come out of CERN (CERNLIB, Geant3) has been. It's all good.

  • Bugzilla? Really? (Score:4, Funny)

    by rfreedman ( 987798 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @11:55AM (#25777661) Homepage

    So, the rocket scientists looked at all of the available open-source bug trackers, and chose Bugzilla? Really?

    • Re:Bugzilla? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by david.gilbert ( 605443 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @12:19PM (#25777819)
      Hopefully the rocket scientists were doing rocket science while leaving the IT people that support the rocket scientists to choose the bug tracker.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 )

      So, the rocket scientists looked at all of the available open-source bug trackers, and chose Bugzilla? Really?

      No matter which solution they choose, it certainly doesn't solve the common people related issues we see:
        - rejected, reason: space debris, this is out of scope
        - won't-fix, reason: no parts available
      I am sure there others.

  • How is this surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AndGodSed ( 968378 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @12:06PM (#25777729) Homepage Journal

    So, open source is cheaper, AND appears to give good results?

    Why am I not surprised?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Open Source bugtrackers have to keep track of bugs across platforms, architectures, languages, and more forks and versions than you can shake a stick at; and it has to do it over the internet, without any kind of physical proximity.

      I think an open-source bug tracker is going to be superior to any proprietary solution, period.

    • Because you must be not-so-new here?

  • It could have saved a lot of lives, actually (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Avatraxiom ( 602424 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @02:07PM (#25778629) Homepage
    My company (Everything Solved [everythingsolved.com]), made PRACA along with NASA, and in one of the first meetings, a researcher at Ames told me that if a system like PRACA had always existed at NASA, then every major mishap in NASA's history could have been avoided. -Max

    • Re:It could have saved a lot of lives, actually (Score:4, Insightful)

      by khallow ( 566160 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @05:11PM (#25779815)
      I strongly doubt it. For example, the two problems that killed astronauts on the Space Shuttles were known issues to the people making the big decisions. Better issue tracking might have helped address these problems before they killed someone, but it is unlikely.

    • hey .. you should play on WF server sometime ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RichiH ( 749257 )
      Filling Apollo I's crew capsule with pure O_2 was a design decission.
    • I just wanted to say that the above comment is actually my opinion and not a representation of any government organization or employee, and I am not an government employee. There were existing PRACA systems before the one we made. One of the other responders is correct that there are many other mitigating forces in mishaps, and that my statement may not be correct. -Max

  • Why not publish the source online? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LingNoi ( 1066278 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @02:19PM (#25778705)

    Why don't they publish read only access of the source code online and allow the public to file bug reports?

    More eyeballs, shallow bugs.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I could use that bug tracker. My space shuttles keep exploding on me, and NASA support is really shitty.

    • I'm not sure the NASA wants people filing bugs for stuff they probably have no knowledge of.

      And honestly, how are you even going to reproduce it? Buy your own shuttle?

      • I think you could reproduce it and get it running, I believe most of the code is produced by outside contractors, so I don't see what the problem is.

        Otherwise how would they test the code themselves? You think they keep a couple of shuttles hanging around for testing the software?

        There was a story on slashdot about a year back about how they produce code, etc.

        • Yes, but are the peeps from NASA really gonna buy into bug reports from 20 year old kids in their mom's basement? I doubt the cons of opening up their bug tracker would be worth the benefits.

          • Considering that said 20 year old kids in their moms' basements will likely spend a significant amount of time poring over the software, I don't see why not. It is free testing, after all.

            • It isn't free if they have to audit every bug report to make sure they're actually real bugs, and then discard 80% of it. That's what I meant by "I doubt the cons of opening up their bug tracker would be worth the benefits"
    • I work at JSC. I'm just a code monkey; and am not speaking for the customer (NASA) or my employer; This should be considered (changeable,poorly expressed) opinion only, limited in all sorts of ways that lawyers like.
      Do you know what a Fischer ellipsoid is? (You're sitting on one.)
      Go ahead, google it. Make sure you fully understand before continuing. I'll wait right here.
      deedee dahdah boody-boop a doop...
      hmmmm....(what's taking so long?)....
      Ah, there you are.
      That's just one of the bazillion things

      • I never said submit contributions my good man, however I believe people would be able to spot bugs if given the chance.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by JetScootr ( 319545 )
          Perhaps I was a bit snarky there...sorry.
          I work in the astronaut training facility, on simulation software. Loosely, I'd categorize the code like this:
          • simulation 'infrastructure' or 'framework' (ie,realtime game engine,graphics,network/shared memory protocols,etc) .. (Requires knowledge specific to computational hardware, i/o devices, etc of the simulator itself)
          • Model software, such as payload X or onboard system Y
            (Requires specific aerospace tech knowledge)
          • Math, like equations of motion, mass properties

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rysc ( 136391 ) *

            It might take a lot to get someone up to material contributions, but many coding errors are noticeable without knowing much about what the software is doing. Although I guess static analyzers could catch most of those just as well.

            I think the real question here is... what's the harm? Worst case you get some emails you ignore, best case you find some genius who can help you. Just allowing the space enthusiasts who are also programmers to get some idea of what's involved, or to see progress go forward day-by-

            • What's the harm? absolutely none, to be sure. The real work would be for the few of us around here who are really into software to be able to sway managers and other engineers into accepting the new ideas. Most programmers here are aerospace engineers, EEs, math or physics geniuses, etc, first, who write code to implement their particular expert discipline. "herding cats" doesn't hardly cover it.
              There's no doubt they're brilliant, most of them, but I'm a minority here- a person whose first expertise is

  • Testing is not enough (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Dark1999 ( 972848 )
    For systems such as these formal verification is very important. NASA understands that and they have a pretty strong "Reliable Software Engineering" team: http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/rse/ [nasa.gov]
  • How did they manage to make using Bugzilla cost $100,000?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AMuse ( 121806 )

      Labor, Labor, Labor.

      They're tying it into, and porting data from, dozens of disparate data sources - some old, some newer.

      Frankly with the cost of labor in the Silicon Valley area even in this economy, I'm shocked it cost that little.

  • Half the bugs will sit in NEW status until the shuttle is retired, then they'll be closed WONTFIX.

  • It sounds like a bad Japanese movie. But it is no surprise to me that open-source software is saving money everywhere in the public sector. And about time!
  • I've been thinking that bug-zilla could be used for other uses as well. For example, I work at a resort. Instead of having a paper to keep track of all the "bug" ie maintence issues perhaps a system like bugzilla would be better. I'm thinking of stuyding computer science, after I get done with my business administration degree. Another thing is that if I use an already existing program, then the company can't come after me for the rights to if it I modify it.

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