Pretty sure most of you have heard about this already, but just in case! Tomorrow something pretty epic is happening: SpaceX is launching astronauts to space unless some last minute problem happens. They’ll be sending NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS. It will take Crew Dragon about 19 hours to reach the ISS and although the capsule is design to dock autonomously, astronaut Hurley will take manual command to test flight systems. Read all about it HERE
I was curious about what it is like to work as a software engineer at SpaceX and found some cool answers on Quora: (link), and (link). From the links:
What’s a day like?
My days typically consist of: running tests on our high-fidelity hardware-in-the-loop testbeds (they’re really cool), learning about the new features that we’re implementing and thinking about ways to test them, development work on our test automation suite or on test cases themselves, and working directly with various engineers (from a surprisingly wide range of disciplines) to test the subsystems they’re responsible for. I also do a lot of direct vehicle support: performing the final software tests on the vehicle prior to launch, working in a clean room environment to configure the vehicle’s computers for flight, etc.
What languages [and] environments do you work in?
Examples include: Python, C++, Go, vim, bash, GNU screen (my favorite), LabView, and a lot of internally-grown technologies.
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