Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 61 posts

Re: Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

#31

Post by Rebelgecko »

criddell wrote: post #4

> MIT received the first major Apollo contract, the only one awarded to a university, and the only one given without competitive bidding. Do these kinds of mission-critical components generally go to the lowest bidder?

It depends on the contract. Some contracts do go to the lowest bidder (the technical term that the contracting folks use is something like "lowest bid meeting technical requirements"). For those sorts of bids, it's extra important that the requirements that the government puts out are well written and thorough.

Some procurements use the "best value" criteria. I think these contracts are more likely to be protested and have lawsuits filed by the losers. It's easy to say "I deserve this contract because $2 billion < $3 billion". Best value can be a bit more subjective.

Re: Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

#32

Post by SmileyRedBall »

elteto wrote: post #27

This contains more technical information behind the 1202 alarms [0]. It is an awesome read. [0] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.1201-pa.html

> This contains more technical information behind the 1202 alarms ..

“You also have to remember that, long before Bill Gates, we had developed a real-time multi-tasking operating system.”

“When a job was to be scheduled, a call would be made to the appropriate executive routine - sort of like a DOS call today”

edit: I thought this was hysterical, on so many levels, just imagine the scenario if Microsoft had got the contract for the AGC.

Re: Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

#33

Post by benj111 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #29
benj111 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Competitive bid doesn't have to mean lowest bidder" No you have to wine and dine the right people, and line a job up for them when they retire.

Which gets someone thrown in jail or a lot of fines these days. Not that it doesn't happen, but it's a lot harder to hide now than 20+ years ago.

I was perhaps being slightly misanthropic. But the game keepers always seem to turn poacher. High ranking military bods end up with defence contractors. Financial regulators end up with working at banks (and visa versa), and politicians seem to end up getting various well paid consulting jobs. I suppose you could argue there are good reasons for it, I cant believe on some level these public servants aren't thinking of their career after retirement.

Re: Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

#34

Post by roboman »

Best quote in the excellent article:

“You can’t get a de­gree in how to fly to the moon,” says Dana Dens­more, who joined the lab in 1965 and be­came a con­trol su­per­vi-sor for the lu­nar-lan­der soft­ware. “You had to get peo­ple who know how to think, who are cre­ative and alert. It was all in-vented on the spot.”

Re: Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

#36

Post by roboman »

“You can’t get a de­gree in how to fly to the moon,” says Dana Dens­more, who joined the lab in 1965 and be­came a con­trol su­per­vi-sor for the lu­nar-lan­der soft­ware. “You had to get peo­ple who know how to think, who are cre­ative and alert. It was all in-vented on the spot.”

Re: Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

#37

Post by cyanoacry »

a-wu wrote: post #13

I recently started listening to a fantastic podcast called 13 Minutes To The Moon[0] produced by the BBC. It’s a retelling of the last 13 minutes until the Apollo 11 lander touched down. Episode 2 talked about the software and the 1202 program code. They interviewed the Guidance controller who was only 26 at the time and talked about how the average age of the flight controllers was 27. I thought that was incredible,…

There are a couple of counter examples, particularly in New Space startups. At 26, I was a Mission Director (SpaceX's equivalent to a NASA Flight Director) for Dragon re-entry and landing.

As the old Apollo-generation engineers start to retire in the space industry, there _is_ fresh blood coming in, and even at larger companies, I've found young folks in top positions. It's just not widely advertised.

Re: Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

#38

Post by bronson »

bumby wrote: post #25
playing_colours wrote: post #8

There is a good book on the computer systems of Apollo project: Digital Apollo https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-apollo It describes interesting questions that were faced on the project: say, how much control over a lunar module could be given to a computer system, and how much they should rely on human engagement.

It's interesting to me that 50+ years later this debate on system control is still very much relevant to aerospace today, like the recent 737-MAX issue.

There's not really any debate. The MAX ignored very basic controls lessons that were learned and institutionalized, as you say, over 50 years ago.

Re: Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

#39

Post by retSava »

_eric wrote: post #12

Kind of off topic, but for those interested, this reminded me of the public repo on github which has the original guidance computer source code for the command and lunar modules[0]. [0] https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11

Went looking for some smart-ass pull request (tongue in cheek) and was gladly surprised there were some! Alas, just proof reading changes and such.
Post reply on HN