In this year's DAta Systems In Aerospace conference which ended yesterday, one of the very first presentations was entitled "Software Development for a Deep Drilling Micro Rover for Mars Exploration". Therein the speaker described development using Ada 95 targetting Linux. In the questions and answers session, he was asked why they were so conservative in choosing Ada as the language but so adventurous in choosing Linux as the operating system. Whatever about Linux, Ada was chosen because it is safe and reliable.