NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era

Career value and motivation

• Many see Voyager work as uniquely prestigious: rare mission-critical, end-of-life spacecraft code; a standout CV item that would strongly attract interview interest.
• Others argue it’s a risky “career dead end”: highly specialized, non-transferable skills on an isolated legacy system, with limited innovation and unclear post-mission prospects.
• Some older engineers say they’d resent being assigned “historical laundry” versus designing new systems; younger engineers may want greenfield work where they can “push the needle.”

Nature of the work: legacy vs innovation

• Supporters emphasize deep, full-stack understanding (hardware + assembly + constraints) and resilience engineering as powerful learning.
• Critics counter that the “cool factor” fades once you’re maintaining obscure tools while peers work on modern tech; they question if it’s the “best learning opportunity.”

Skills, hiring signals, and CVs

• Several commenters say any Voyager experience would be a strong hiring signal, suggesting problem-solving ability and mindset; tooling can be taught.
• There’s debate on niche skills (assembly, FORTH, Lisp, APL): good for mental flexibility, but not obviously valued in mainstream hiring.

Project management and modern practices

• Some contrast earlier eras of “true ownership” and less process with today’s perceived “clown show” of Scrum, standups, CI/CD, and PM layers.
• Others defend modern methods as exposing dysfunction and democratizing work, while acknowledging many organizations practice “fake agile” that adds meetings without empowerment.

Documentation, simulators, and technical debt

• Thread notes heavy loss and fragmentation of original documentation; much was paper that vanished during office moves.
• For at least one onboard computer, the team lacks a trusted simulator, a reliable instruction set definition, and even certainty about bit ordering.
• They once had a full testbed but decommissioned it; now rely on partial simulators and ambiguous scanned docs, sometimes with handwritten, unexplained edits.
• Commenters are surprised such a significant mission wasn’t more thoroughly digitized, but others point to tight budgets and low expectations for probe longevity.

LLMs and AI tools

• Some suggest LLMs could help read, organize, and even generate legacy code.
• Strong pushback highlights hallucinations, lack of trustworthiness, and the unacceptable risk for billion‑dollar, irreplaceable spacecraft.
• A middle view sees AI as a supervised assistant at best, never an autonomous actor on such missions.