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"The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer" is a wonderful talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY45YE7ggng The AGC implemented a virtual machine to run higher-level computational routines. The whole architecture is really interesting.
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.
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That’s funny because I actually love the Hans Zimmer theme.
I really loved the Hans Zimmer music too. I got pumped up every time I heard it. I felt some bloat at times when they really dug into that 1202 error. It just kept coming up again and again.
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,…
It's a really good podcast, but I found it a bit bloated in places, I could have done without the Hans Zimmer theme, of which they are so inordinately proud.
If you got a multi-Grammy winning composer to make your podcast theme you'd be extremely proud too.
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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.
My limited understanding in a broader sense (as opposed to the specific 737-MAX case) is there is still considerable debate on who should have ultimate control (human or software) of the aircraft when making critical decisions. I remember reading an article a while back that made it seem like Boeing and Airbus were on different sides of this spectrum in basic design philosophy, but I don't know how true that is.
Quite amazing what an important role women like Margaret Hamilton played in the Apollo project, given how hard it is nowadays to get more women into engineering positions. You may remember the famous picture of Hamilton next to the stack of code she and her team wrote for Apollo: see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_...
The article mentions the overload on the computer was caused by "a mismatched power supply to a radar" triggering too many calculations. Any idea how or why the power supply was mismatched ? Luckily software saves the day but what was the root cause of the hardware fault ? Was that a case of a mismanaged change in configuration ?
EDIT: this article has more detail https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/no-a-checklist-error...