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NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)

apcmag.com

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Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)

#2

Post by TallGuyShort »

If this kind of thing interests you, there are some great resources here about the Gemini and Apollo guidance computer architecture, including recreations of them: http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/. I also recommend the book "Digital Apollo" about the role of digital computers in early space flight. I found both fascinating.

Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)

#4

Post by batbomb »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #2

If this kind of thing interests you, there are some great resources here about the Gemini and Apollo guidance computer architecture, including recreations of them: http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/ . I also recommend the book "Digital Apollo" about the role of digital computers in early space flight. I found both fascinating.

Or check out this for all sorts of info about NASA's probes:

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-480/sp480.htm

Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)

#6

Post by spectre256 »

It's worth noting that the software, while only 36k machine words long, and the hardware, which was very slow even by the standards of other computers of the 60s, were remarkable works created in only a couple years by huge teams (peak of 800 people working on hardware and 400 on software IIRC).

Its popular to dismiss the AGC as simple and uninteresting, but it was a challenging engineering task, and it never once had a failure in flight.

There's lots of resources on the internet to read more. A great book on the topic is Digital Apollo by David Mindell

Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)

#8

Post by jordigh »

http://code.google.com/p/virtualagc/source/browse/trunk/LICE...

"The software for the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) and LM Abort Guidance Computer (AGS) is believed to be in the public domain."

Eh? So is it open source or not?

I doubt someone would come around and claim exclusive copyright on this, but still... Netlib had the same problem, and that's why replacements exist. The ACM still once in a while claims copyright on ancient Fortran code from the late 1960's. Back then it was a blissful golden era when people didn't even think that source code was elligible for copyright.

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