Need some help sizing your beyond-low-Earth-orbit vehicle? Request NASA’s BLAST software. Need to forecast the weather on Venus? That would be Venus-GRAM (global reference atmospheric model). Or maybe you just want to play around with the NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit. (We do!) Then it’s a good thing that part of NASA’s public mandate is making their software available. And the 2017-2018 Software Catalog (PDF) has just been released.
Unfortunately, not everything that NASA does is open source, and a substantial fraction of the software suites are only available for code “to be used on behalf of the U.S. Government”. But still, it’s very cool that NASA is opening up as much of their libraries as they are. Where else are you going to get access to orbital debris engineering models or cutting-edge fluid dynamics modelers and solvers, for free?
We already mentioned this in the Links column, but we think it’s worth repeating because we could use your help. The catalog is 154 pages long, and we haven’t quite finished leaf through every page. If you see anything awesome inside, let us know in the comments. Do any of you already use NASA’s open-source software?
NOT A HACK! ;-P But WOW!
Oh come on, everything NASA does is a hack.
If you ever code something that “feels like a hack but it works” just remember that a CPU is literally a rock that we tricked into thinking
not to oversimplify: first you have to flatten the rock and put lighting inside it
I’ve been using the OVERFLOW CFD package along with a few other programs that go along with it (Chimera Grid Tools, PEGASUS 5, and PLOT3D) for doing model rocket simulations. Getting the code is a pain (lots of paperwork, several NDAs, and some back and forth mailing – as in snail mail); but it works great…and is an excuse to run my Sun Fire V890 deskside.
It is presumed that this red tape means the software is only available to US residents?
NASABriefs was always a good read.
I don’t see any software for controlling the HVAC on the Moon base.
Clearly you have never been there, or you would know that the temperature is a steady and very comfortable 25 Celsius about 30 meters below the surface of the moon. ;-)
Wait, we pay NASA and we cannot get what they have produced with our money!
Actually, they provide “Most” solutions at a nominal charge/free due to taxpayer involvement.
Nuclear weapons were developed with my tax money. I demand the plans now.
Isn’t pursuing a patent in the US technically working “on behalf of the US government” considering they can use the tech off the books?
I’m pretty sure I left this as a tip as soon as this catalogue was made available…
All Hail [MoeB1] !
Unfortunately so much of the mentioned tools and sources are “U.S. Release Only” or “U.S. Government Purpose Release”.
But I’m only half way trough.
69 items under “General Public”, 167 under “Open Source”