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Comment by 4ad | Hacker News Reader

I am sure Elon Musk won't get the chance to answer my reddit question, since apparently the reddit mob downvoted me to death, so I am asking here, perhaps anyone knows.

1) What RTOS does SpaceX use for the embedded hardware on board? I know they use a lot of Linux, but not for hard real time stuff. What are they running on their microcontrollers?

2) Is it programmed in C, or some other language?

3) Is the embedded equipment on board running on a switched network? If so, does it use TCP/IP or some other protocol?

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As far as the RTOS, it sounds like they use Linux:

> Linux is used for everything at SpaceX. The Falcon, Dragon, and Grasshopper vehicles use it for flight control, the ground stations run Linux, as do the developers' desktops. SpaceX is "Linux, Linux, Linux", he said.

http://lwn.net/Articles/540368/

I didn't personally downvote (or see this question), but it probably get downvoted for not being laser-focused on ITS/Mars.

Anyway, you might find some of your answers in this AMA that the SpaceX software devs did a while back.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1853ap/we_are_spacex_...

former SpaceX employee: There are a couple of YouTube videos around where they talk about the nature of the systems. I'm pretty sure I can't talk about it but I'll try to find the videos.

I think there's also some software engineer AMAs.

I'm sorry but dozens, maybe hundreds of other questions were more deserving - this ama is about sending a rocket to mars not about their IT stack...

We are all a bit scarred after the IAC debacle, perhaps that explains the downvotes.

The IT stack was the cause of over a billion dollars of lost missions from leaving Earth all the way to Mars missions. It also is what will or won't get the rocket to Mars. So, it was worth an answer given that by itself has killed so many missions with the Moon missions themselves taking a huge team & cost to do right despite failures [which showed up].

I've heard its C++ at spaceX, they had a company standard C++ interview test.

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