[cube13]

>It's that way because the Boeing CST has its own software, as does the Lockheed's Orion and the Soyuz and every unmanned spacecraft ever developed. Development costs and quality could be greatly improved if all of them shared a single codebase.

No, it's that way because nobody else in the world is using the specific hardware that they're using in the exact same configuration. Nobody is using the same input sensors. Nobody is using the exact same engine configuration or power.

Nobody has the same amount of fault tolerance or backup hardware.

That's what I meant.

Compared to a browser, where most of the more tricky hardware configuration issues are handled entirely by the OS.

[rbanffy]

I agree with you - the hardware and its configuration is very different between all of them. Yet, the basics are the same and a lot of code could be shared between the different spacecraft if they builders agreed on a certain level of commonality (and it doesn't even need to be a high one).

And yes - a common OS for spacecraft would be a giant leap forward, abstracting the differences in hardware and providing a unified interface for everyone using them.

The strongest barrier against sharing development is the security concerns. Nobody wants people to build missiles with that.

http://www.openpilot.org/ has, so far, avoided these problems.