Eclipse Rich Client Platform: Designing, Coding, and Packaging Java™ Applications

Foreword by Jeff Norris

On June 10, 2003, I counted down the last seconds to the launch of the Spirit Mars Rover with the rest of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission team. For my team, it was a break from the final months of development and testing of Maestro, the software application that we would use to analyze the data received from the rover and plan its science activities once it arrived on Mars seven months later. One remarkable fact about launching something like Spirit is that the actual rover, or payload, is crammed into a tiny chamber at the very top of a huge rocket, called the launch vehicle. The launch vehicle is a fiendishly complicated system all on its own and its criticality can’t be overestimated. Still, it’s not really the point ...