Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
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Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#2> The Globus INK is a remarkable piece of machinery, an analog computer that calculates orbits through an intricate system of gears, cams, and differentials. It provided astronauts with a high-resolution, full-color display of the spacecraft's position, way beyond what an electronic space computer could provide in the 1960s.
If nothing else, at least skim through this article to see the photos. It really was quite a remarkable and beautiful piece of machinery!
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#3> The Globus INK is a remarkable piece of machinery, an analog computer that calculates orbits through an intricate system of gears, cams, and differentials. It provided astronauts with a high-resolution, full-color display of the spacecraft's position, way beyond what an electronic space computer could provide in the 1960s. If nothing else, at least skim through this article to see the photos. It really was quite a…
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#4This is coolest thing I've read all year. It's fascinating to see all the work that went through a single instrument.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#5For someone who grew up with the internet the fact this is mechanical blows my mind.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#6sometimes you do wonder how USSR, with all these mad scientists and engineers, could ever go down
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#7Very impressive. I wondered how this could possibly work, but it actually only does fixed circular orbits by dead reckoning
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#8One of the museums has one of the early aircraft based mechanical inertial guidance systems on display. Seems it was two or three or four times larger than this. It would be interesting to find a similarly detailed analysis of how those things operated.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#9sometimes you do wonder how USSR, with all these mad scientists and engineers, could ever go down
To be fair they were facing pretty much the entire rest of the worlds fight against "evil communism". It's more remarkable how far they got with essentially a new way of trying things.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#10[deleted]