> Yes they need to get email in space. It's easy way to send documents back and forth.

To me that's probably much more interesting. We assume they have all this fancy NASA tech, probably some special communication protocols, but nope, email is fine. Still not sure why they'd use Outlook, but I guess it's easier than retraining astronauts on Alpine or Mutt.

How long did the US military rely on mIRC... decades, maybe they still do?

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charlieboardman 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If they have stock outlook they are doing normal networking and are connected to the normal internet over some deep-space antenna setup. So why not just use Debian and gmail in the browser if you want easy? The ISS uses Debian. I can't believe it's too hard to get astronauts to open Firefox

	▲	dugite-code 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The browser would be far too slow for practical use. Local fist software, which ironically outlook is, would be the way to go.

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stackskipton 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

US Military still uses IRC/mIRC for similar reasons. Easy to self host and it's low bandwidth.

	▲	esseph an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Wow I remember that from late OIF. Fascinating that they're still using it!

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HeyLaughingBoy 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd ask the opposite question. Why would they not use Outlook and instead use something like Alpine or Mutt? This is 2026, you know.

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irthomasthomas 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Is this incident not reason enough? Astronauts in space are needing remote support to debug it, and taking up priceless mission time.

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hatthew 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, but bespoke software isn't necessarily going to be more reliable.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

> The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed.

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fc417fc802 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Alpine and mutt are about as far from bespoke as it gets. Both are far less likely to suffer from bugs than outlook.

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applfanboysbgon 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This quote is completely and totally irrelevant. Nobody is saying they should code a new Outlook. If they did code something, it would be significantly smaller in scope and rigorously tested like spacebound programs in the past were. "New space-engineering-grade code created with actual engineering practices" is absolutely going to be more reliable than "old bloated commercial shitware". But I guess software engineering is a lost art, so it can't be helped.

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HeyLaughingBoy 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It's also going to take a hell of a lot longer and cost more than buying an Outlook license. If I was lead on that project, you'd have an uphill battle trying to convince me that spending $100k+ on an email solution unless you can point to specific, serious deficiencies in the existing off the shelf solutions.

Software Engineering is far from a lost art: part of the practice is intelligently making cost-benefit decisions.

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applfanboysbgon 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The current solution is literally causing problems in space. Space-grade engineering is expensive, but having things go wrong on your already very expensive mission is even more expensive.

	▲	dotancohen 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Until we've had this failure, I do agree that using COTS software was the logical choice. And now we know better.

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SamBam 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Alpine and Mutt are about 20 and 30 years old, respectively.

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HeyLaughingBoy 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And that problem would go away with a 30 year-old solution?

	▲	fc417fc802 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That problem would be much less likely with a minimalist battle tested OSS solution whose maintainers and users have decidedly different priorities than those governing something like outlook or even thunderbird. The higher the stakes the more valuable minimalism becomes.