Time to start my own backyard space program.
NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
21–30 of 37 posts
Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
#22We invest a lot of code in GUI, which makes me think of:
I'm afraid the holodeck will be society's last invention. - Scott Adams
And this ultimate GUI would require the ultimate coding effort.
Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
#23We invest a lot of code in GUI, which makes me think of: I'm afraid the holodeck will be society's last invention. - Scott Adams And this ultimate GUI would require the ultimate coding effort.
The Apollo 11 UI module, code named DSKY/PINBALL, was meant as a demonstration unit and never meant to be the actual operating interface for the mission.
"As time passed, and more and more people became familiar with the demo, nobody got around to inventing an improvement for the user interface, so the coders simply built it into the flight software without any specific requirements to do so"
The future will always be duct tape and bubble gum.
Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
#24It'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 ha…
It never once had a failure in flight, except for the short in Apollo 14, which they managed to hack around mid-flight. Cool story: http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/#Final_exam_for_the_advanced_s...
That was caused by an actual physical short (in space, conductive bits, usually soldier balls, floating around and shorting things was a big problem), which happened somewhat commonly. I think Apollo 12 nearly aborted the launch because the display was showing all 8s briefly, also caused by a short.
However there truly was never an unknown software bug discovered in flight. Lots of known software bugs had workarounds, partially because there was a hard deadline of about 4 months where the software couldn't be changed before the launch. Pretty amazing.
Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
#25"July 23, 2009"
Misleading indeed but is not like realeasing the latest kernel patch, where the code date is important.
Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
#26Anyone who is looking for something to run it on could take a look at Block I Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC): How to build one in your basement [1]. The build took one guy four years and a lot of wire-wrap. A fascinating and quite awe-inspiring piece of work. [1] http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/
Wow. I have no idea what I just read, but it....it was awesome.
Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
#27It'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 ha…
> 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.
Stating it never failed in flight is jumping the gun a bit, it didn't fly enough times to get a reliable statistic.
Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
#28Anyone who is looking for something to run it on could take a look at Block I Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC): How to build one in your basement [1]. The build took one guy four years and a lot of wire-wrap. A fascinating and quite awe-inspiring piece of work. [1] http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/
Haha... That's pretty amazing...
How about an emulator?
Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
#29Anyone who is looking for something to run it on could take a look at Block I Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC): How to build one in your basement [1]. The build took one guy four years and a lot of wire-wrap. A fascinating and quite awe-inspiring piece of work. [1] http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/
Haha... That's pretty amazing... How about an emulator?
Sure: http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/
Or, if you want a web-based version (via asm.js): http://svtsim.com/moonjs/agc.html
(I knew about the Burkey version, but the JS port I just found. Ain't the modern world amazing?)
Re: NASA Open Sources Apollo 11 Code (2009)
#30So they must have written this simulator without help from source code http://svtsim.com/moonjs/agc.html. While it doesn't strike me as a bad simulator, I wonder if it's right.