Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
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Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
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Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
#2[deleted]
Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
#3Don Eyles has a web site, where there's an interesting article called "Tales From the Lunar Module Guidance Computer":
Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
#4Don is still around, and is still awesome! His memory for events around that time is surprisingly sharp, for it being 50 years ago.
He's been an invaluable resource for us at the VirtualAGC project [1]. He provided over half (!) of the AGC programs we've made available, including LM software for Apollo 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 15-17, plus several other ground development programs. He also was the source of a majority of the schematics that we used in the AGC restoration [2] -- I can say with 100% confidence that it wouldn't have been possible to get that computer working again without his help.
He's got a book out now, Sunburst and Luminary [3], that is very good and goes into a lot of technical detail on the LM software, without getting too much into the weeds. I highly recommend it if you're interested in that sort of thing!
[1] http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU&list=PL-_93BVApb...
Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
#5Title correction: there should be an exclamation point after "extra". As in "extra! extra! read all about it", not "extra weird–looking freak". Although it did make me laugh :)
Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
#6What a fantastic article!
Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
#7Man the culture has changed a lot since the 70s.
Great article.
Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
#8> What NASA needs most, he says, is some imaginative PR... The astronauts he has met could provide reams of picturesque copy; they are hard-drinking, fast-living, generally “wild and weird.”
The editor of Rolling Stone was certainly paying attention! It sounds like they sent Tom Wolfe to cover Apollo just a short time after publishing this. His book, The Right Stuff, would cement the image of those first American astronauts in just this “wild and weird” frame.
Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
#9Don is still around, and is still awesome! His memory for events around that time is surprisingly sharp, for it being 50 years ago. He's been an invaluable resource for us at the VirtualAGC project [1]. He provided over half (!) of the AGC programs we've made available, including LM software for Apollo 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 15-17, plus several other ground development programs. He also was the source of a majorit…
Mike, thanks a lot for working on the restoration project! It was amazing to watch your progress and the ingenious tools and solutions you guys came up with.
It also sparked my interest in AGC-related things and while I at first expected it to be a somewhat simple and elegant machine (easier to formally verify) I quickly realized it too like almost any engineering project was subject to reality/deadline-driven compromises everywhere (looking at you memory architecture). However, it is a machine which still 'fits in your head' compared to the historical achievement. We probably won't be able to do that kind of thing with the more recently developed, more complex systems we're going to use for the next steps in space exploration.
Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)
#10Title correction: there should be an exclamation point after "extra". As in "extra! extra! read all about it", not "extra weird–looking freak". Although it did make me laugh :)
HN's software should probably replace non-trailing exclamation points with something rather than nothing.
I took the Extra bit out of the title for now, since it isn't needed and I suppose might confuse younger readers.