Interesting read on why the Spirit rover died for a bit...

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG2004 ... <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>It's an example of the rule that the last person to touch software can cause huge problems. <p></p><i></i>

[XMEN Gambit]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>"The irony of it was that the operating system was doing exactly what we'd told it to do,"<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Almost every programmer tracking down a bug ends up with this same exact answer. Those few that don't find a hardware failure instead. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br>XMEN member<br>Card-carrying DTM<br>OKL Fish-napper<br><br>Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained.<br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em> The Tao of Programming</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--></p><i></i>

[LoSTimberWolf]

When the Voyagers were on their way to the outer planets they where practicly killing themselves because the programmers set the system fail safe requirements to exact. The temperature changes kept causing the backup systems to trigger. So its not abnormal for NASA to run into problems with software. <p><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>-LoS-</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>TimberWolf</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->{FF}<br>Vehicle Specilist</p><i></i>

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

It's mostly because they don't thoroughly QA their software before it's released, in my opinion.<br><br>There are two types of reviewers at NASA: those that are swamped with work and do review all the QA materials supplied by an outside company. And those that are not so swamped because they don't thoroughly review the QA material.<br><br>Also in the software programming aspect, NASA is run more like an academic institution than a company. <p></p><i></i>