[COFF] How much Fortran?

[Dan Cross]

On Sun, Feb 2, 2020 at 8:46 PM Arthur Krewat <krewat at kilonet.net> wrote:

> So, given the membership here, I wonder, does anyone have the inside
> scoop? How much Fortran was used ?
>
>
> https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/01/31/1837209/nasa-is-trying-to-save-voyager-2-after-a-power-glitch-shut-down-its-instruments


I have this memory, but I cannot verify it.

When I first joined the ACM, I got to select what SIGs I wanted to
(sub?)join. SIGPLAN seemed interesting because, hey, programming languages
are kind of cool, so I joined it. At the time, they distributed a
newsletter called, I think, the "Fortran Forum"; perhaps that was even a
subgroup inside of SIGPLAN.

I only remember getting one or two issues of the newsletter. But I believe
one of them had an article about Voyager and the use of Fortran. The
article stuck out to me because it mentioned that they thought the mission
would only has for (however long), but of course it's been going on much
longer than originally anticipated. However, I can find no reference to
that now, and perhaps the article I'm recalling wasn't talking about either
Fortran (forth as an alternative?) or a mission other than Voyager.

Regardless, one DOES wonder in what capacity FORTRAN was used in the
mission. Was it used on the onboard computers, or was it used on the
downlink stations for e.g. data analysis?

        - Dan C.
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