They followed the money. The US Congress saddled NASA with a mandate for a Shuttle without funding it properly. The Russians never even developed crewed rockets that could do anything interesting beyond LEO. Everyone else wasn’t doing much until the last decade or so.
There have long been plenty of smart people at NASA, and they’re wasted on poor funding and management. It has nothing to do with IT.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I work in software, most of my peers are not spacefaring material. The issue is budget and ability/desire to do things that are bold instead of sending robots up there.
legion02@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Sure, but is bet some of them would be pretty useful for programming fuel pump controllers or navigation systems. Neil Armstrong flew Apollo 11, he didn’t design or build it.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
No, they would not. The kind of software development done in aerospace is very, very different from the commercial industry at large. Writing 20 lines per week might be considered a breakneck pace because of all the formal verification that needs to be done on every single line.
legion02@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Eh, some parts are that critical but also someone has to write the logic for the bathroom occupancy light.