Comment by applfanboysbgon
14 days ago
The current solution is literally causing problems in space. Space-grade engineering is expensive, but having things go wrong on your already very expensive mission is even more expensive.
14 days ago
The current solution is literally causing problems in space. Space-grade engineering is expensive, but having things go wrong on your already very expensive mission is even more expensive.
Until we've had this failure, I do agree that using COTS software was the logical choice. And now we know better.
Sure, but people who didn't know better until this particular incident do not deserve the title "engineer". Being able to classify and manage risks before they happen is engineering 101.
Engineering requires working around constraints as well - and a major constraint of any project I've worked on was budget. If they wrote a new email client and it had some bug, we'd be laughing about why they didn't use one of the COTS email clients.
It’s a personal communication device. It’s not mission critical.