Very excited for that launch. One of my oldest friends has been writing code for the Dragon 2 for about 2.5 years now.
That's cool, do he work for SpaceX?
Must be quite the emotional ride when you worked on something for a long time knowing it might blow up in a sec.
Yeah, he's been there for about 6 or 7 years now. He worked at JPL prior to that. Everything he writes is for the pre-launch side of the mission. So when it comes to Falcon 9 and the Dragon 2 capsule, he writes code that handles all the safety checks in the minutes leading up to launch.
He gave me a tour of Space X on a Sunday once when I visited him out in Cali. This was several years before the grass hopper program, so the facility wasn't nearly as busy as it probably is on a Sunday today. He basically has these massive tables with every bit of electronic hardware that's on the rockets and capsules mounted in an orderly fashion. The 'on board' cpu(s) doesn't/don't know the difference between the table and a launchpad, and he simulates all kinds of scenarios with the hardware. A lot of the stuff he checks will help determine the go/no go for launch. It's pretty cool stuff.
He telecommutes now out of NYC. Kinda of bummed, I'd love to go back out there and see the facility a few years later.