Doom in SpaceX
On hardware and software used by SpaceX
HPE Environment Virtualization (IoT), Prague, October 18th 2016, Martin Dvorak

Game developers takeover?
"We actually hire a lot of our best software engineers
out of the gaming industry…"
-- Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX
“… rocket hardware is hard, but rocket software is
easier than game software…”
-- John Carmack, lead Id software programmer
NASA HQ
Does Elon knows something about Mars that others don’t know?

Elon Musk
“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”

Elon Musk
“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”
The player
takes the role
of an unnamed
space marine
who has been
punitively
posted to
Mars fighting
his way
through
hordes of
invading
demons from
Hell…

From unlimited resources to agile tooling-equipped skilled programmer squads
Dusk of traditional aerospace mindset
• From traditional aerospace mindset…
– SSP STS: 1.700M base price + $450M/mission
• … to competitive market/environment
– SpaceX: 300M+90M base price + $57M/mission (w/o reuse)
• Game designers w/ SpaceX culture-fit
– Skills SpaceX is looking for to build affordable critical systems

SpaceX launch vehicles and spacecraft in perspective
Falcon & Dragon
Payload to LEO (STS 32,000kg)
68m
110m
Payload
Dragon
spacecraft
Composite
fairing
Žižkovská věž
213m

Falcon Mission Sequence

From 1+1 AGC/DSKY and 5xGPC, to Space X solution
Hardware (Redundancy)
Falcon 9 Stage / Falcon Heavy (12 strings) / Dragon

From PGNCS and PASS/HALS/OPS to SpaceX solution
Software
• Team
– 35 flight SW + 9 ground (STS PASS ~270)
• Programming languages (Falcon/Dragon)
– C++, LabVIEW FPGA/RT + Python + C#, Matlab
– JavaScript @ Chromium
• Modularization
– N/A (STS’s OPS like sequence)
• Testing
– Table rocket
– Cutting the strings
– Tests recordings + (reusable launch vehicle data)
– Environment virtualization LabView Field-Programmable Gate Array

Lessons Learned
• SpaceX learns through experience rather than
attempting to anticipate all possible system
interactions
• It is difficult to build a creative high performance
engineering culture
• It is really easy to ruin the creativity and
performance by too much organization, rules and
process
• SpaceX is achieving a good balance of creativity
and systems engineering for agility and affordability
“Failure is an option
here. If things are
not failing, you are
not innovating
enough.”
-- Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX
“Failure is not an
option.”
-- Gene Kranz, flight director of
Gemini, Apollo and STS
missions

… mind Mars settlers .)