We came to the same conclusion at Kubos, and moved from C to Rust for most of our flight segment/application code (embedded Linux on the satellite OBC).
Awesome, do you think it’s a hard sell for old school government contractors? I am passionate to write embedded systems with Rust, but I worry it will be too hard of sale to d school contractors with stacks already written C, and C developers on staff.
I've had a good number of conversations actually with some NASA FSW coders, and in general they're open to these ideas. NASA has a project with architectural and structural goals pretty well-aligned with what we set out to do at Kubos: https://cfs.gsfc.nasa.gov/Features.html
The biggest challenge is to prove that it works. The space software community historically is very conservative and risk-averse, and mostly for good reason. As Kubos (and hopefully others) get more flight heritage with Rust on the flight segment, it'll be a much easier sell.
That's the biggest obstacle I think. Someone will have to break the seal and establish that "Rust in Space" actually succeeds consistently, then larger "trad space" organizations will follow.
elamje|6 years ago
davesims|6 years ago
The biggest challenge is to prove that it works. The space software community historically is very conservative and risk-averse, and mostly for good reason. As Kubos (and hopefully others) get more flight heritage with Rust on the flight segment, it'll be a much easier sell.
That's the biggest obstacle I think. Someone will have to break the seal and establish that "Rust in Space" actually succeeds consistently, then larger "trad space" organizations will follow.