Ben Marx

Senior Director of Software at True Anomaly / Co-author of Adopting Elixir

Ben has been using Elixir professionally for about ten years. He co-authored Adopting Elixir with José Valim, and Bruce Tate. He’s used Elixir in different domains from Bleacher Report to networking and now to space and satellite c2.

Talk:
Building Mission Critical Systems with Elixir

Elixir is great for terrestrial systems but what about extraterrestrial systems. This talks explains how we built Mosaic, the first Elixir system to command and control satellites. We’ll briefly explore why Elixir was chosen and then dive into how we built the system and importantly how we verified and validated it. We’ll explore the difference between traditional aerospace software development and new space development and how it doesn’t have to be a binary choice. All of this work culminated in our first launch in March 2024, what we learned from it, and where we’re going next.

TALK OBJECTIVE:

  • Attendees should come away from the talk with an understanding of why Elixir was chosen for the space domain and what makes space so hard (and yet familiar). The talk will also illustrate how software and hardware worked together to create novel processes and a solid and shared engineering culture. TARGET AUDIENCE:
  • Anyone who has an interest in space and satellites and who wants to push Elixir into new domains should be intrigued.