A web-based mission control framework by NASA
github.com
github.com
I'm not in that industry anymore but I just wish everybody would just grow up, use this (and related) software and contribute. No reason not to do that (of course except for pride).
Obviously there can be situations where common approaches are developed and used but this seems to be the exception rather than the norm.
(source - I've spent 10 years trying to work this issue in a UK public acquisition context)
Maybe you mean that every manager creates a distinct AWS account for their own department? That would be fairly irregular but possible.
The first maximizes "unique requirements" while the second minimizes them.
Between the two, I generally prefer "build", bad as it is, because it leads to fewer horror shows later.
(10 years at MSFC, 28 years in this industry.)
Naturally no one was willing to give up on their own one.
It's the same in automotive industry (development and end-of-line-testing) (XCP and MDF helped, but ultimately devolved into a meta-standard for vendor specific functions) and in the rest of the industry I've had contact with (cooling, heating), fragmentation is as bad as ever.
Standardizing on web standards will probably follow the pattern of making of adding another layer that is worse than anything in the previous 30 years.
:(
Heh, sounds like they have a lot in common with JavaScript frameworks and web development in general. With this observation in mind I doubt making mission control "web based" will rectify the situation...
I do not know the details of mission control technology but my uneducated guess would be that this is a cultural/management problem in these organizations. Top-down hierarchy with very large resistance to change would make introducing of new ideas (open source solution in this case) a tough job for any single actor. Also the IT-contractors or companies benefitting from selling these solutions are probably doing everything they can to keep the status quo as it is.
How much time do you lose keeping track of those solutions and their dependencies?
The JS world has probably the hugest fragmentation problem in software history. Every level in the stack is rapidly evolving, constantly spawning multiple half-baked alternative solutions to the same problems. I think GP's point is simply that if similar things are happening in NASA on small level and are considered a problem, then switching to a technology ecosystem that is a living embodiment of those issues isn't going to help.
"Try increasing left-pad."
(But seriously, this is really cool and I'm looking forward to trying the Kerbal Space Program plugin.)
It’s a little silly, but it’s where most of the UI innovation and technical skills lie at the moment, and we’re frankly getting to the point where there isn’t that much of an alternative.
This would really modernize things. And I love how the whole project is so clearly made to enable contribution from the open source community. Really aspiring to leverage open source in the best possible way.
I guess they'd have to make it as easy as possible because the project might not have many uses outside of NASA.
A lot of software systems in Operations a little more than 10 years ago were (Open?)Motif on Solaris. I remember helping a colleague transition to Qt when Motif’s event system just couldn’t handle an extra 30 data streams we were projecting for use by Mars Science Lander. It was something like a 30 minute demo of Qt Designer (with Hal, the software engineer actually tasked) and him giving up a weekend to full replace all the Motif code. The codebase had shrunk by more than half, all 30 additional data streams had been added, and the Ops Engineers reported that the app was noticeably snappier even with the new streams.
We’ve seen remarkable uptick in OpenMCT usage at different centers purely because it is open source and folks can use it for free. Other similar products require you to contact the supporting org, request a delivery of the software, spend days/weeks deploying and configuring it for your mission, before you can even begin to evaluate the software. We’re finding that by lowering barriers to access and by allowing others to modify it to suit their needs, we are getting much better buy in from operators and missions.
Great tool! We're looking at relying on it more heavily. I'm actually planning on developing a new widget for Open MCT in the near future :)
Maybe I'm wrong, though. I'm certainly open to being persuaded.
"mission control" is a relatively opaque concept and I hope that by open sourcing components we can shed more light on the overall architecture and complexity of mission systems and perhaps even begin to simplify them.
We’re in progress on refactors to remove angular, which is no small feat given the number of things which angular does for an application.
That said, there is significant overlap between the two.
The UI demo does actually look quite good.
ISS has planned communication outages resulting from satellite signal loss. Everyone in mission control knows when these disconnects will occur and how long they’ll last and plan their breaks around them.
If you view an HN page that you commented on in an incognito window, you will see what I'm talking about.
I can only guess that the moderators took this action because of the large number of Amazon affiliate links you have been posting.
Its fine to post an occasional product link when it relates to the topic, but affiliate links are not so welcome - especially when they are disguised behind an amzn.to shortened URL. Just post an original Amazon link, with everything removed from the URL except the minimum required to go to the correct page. The URL should look like https://www.amazon.com/dp/NNNNNNNNNN/ where the N's are the ASIN.
Some of your other comments, like this one, are good quality and people have "vouched" them which makes them visible to all.
I suggest you email the moderators (address is somewhere in the links at the bottom of every page) with an apology and a promise to not post any more affiliate links. Maybe they will reinstate your account.