That is very cool. I remember seeing a post on this and there was a line of thinking to the tune of "modern engineers are no where near as impressive as the ones 50 years ago". Someone woking in astronautical engineering asking a basic question about how this would handle things like eccentricity, procession of nodes, etc, and the response was simple: "it doesn't!". Honestly these things are really cool I would totally go for a trackball globe being spun around by some Arduino controlled rollers. Even without the gears a modern recreation would be a really cool thing.
Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
31–40 of 66 posts
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#32sometimes you do wonder how USSR, with all these mad scientists and engineers, could ever go down
Stagnation killed them. Those mad scientists, and Soviet society in general, never stopped being able to make those things. It's the fact they weren't able to be more efficient, to increase their output, to give better and more food to its population that was the poison pill.
The US took advantage by forcing them to increase military spending. Gorbachev tried to find a way out of stagnation and killed the whole thing instead.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#33sometimes you do wonder how USSR, with all these mad scientists and engineers, could ever go down
When you can't provide basic needs to your population, it doesn't matter how good the scientists are
soviet union was actually very good at providing basic needs (food, housing, education, medical care) to its population. in fact much better than even the US does right now. that is not the reason ussr collapsed
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you can't provide basic needs to your population, it doesn't matter how good the scientists are
soviet union was actually very good at providing basic needs (food, housing, education, medical care) to its population. in fact much better than even the US does right now. that is not the reason ussr collapsed
The poorly stocked Soviet grocery stores would suggest otherwise.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you can't provide basic needs to your population, it doesn't matter how good the scientists are
soviet union was actually very good at providing basic needs (food, housing, education, medical care) to its population. in fact much better than even the US does right now. that is not the reason ussr collapsed
Source? As the person who spent good part of my life there, I would like to know more details. I do remember my parents waiting for an government provided apartment for 15 years though.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#36sometimes 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.
You can remove quotes in your sentence.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
soviet union was actually very good at providing basic needs (food, housing, education, medical care) to its population. in fact much better than even the US does right now. that is not the reason ussr collapsed
Source? As the person who spent good part of my life there, I would like to know more details. I do remember my parents waiting for an government provided apartment for 15 years though.
its pretty well documented but here is a quora answer https://www.quora.com/How-expensive-were-housing-costs-in-th...
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#38For someone who grew up with the internet the fact this is mechanical blows my mind.
Check out the video below from Marc where he works on his Model 19 Teletype. Teletypes used a serial to parallel converter comprised of a solenoid and a multi-lobe camshaft that converted an incoming electrical signal (serial) into 5 individual bits (mechanical). Timing was important, so the motor on the Teletype had to be running at a known speed. You used a tuning fork that had a slot cut in it to look through to c…
On the Model 33 ASR that I learned programming with, we were taught to type CR LF RUBOUT at the end of each line when punching a tape. RUBOUT is like a no-op character which is ignored by the receiving end, so it gave a little extra time for both the carriage return and line feed to complete.
RUBOUT is also how you would correct a typo on the tape: you would backspace the tape punch, hit RUBOUT, and then the character you meant. The RUBOUT character had all holes punched, effectively erasing the typo.
When operating the remote computer interactively, we just had to type CR, as the remote system would provide the LF and a slight pause. Working directly on the remote timesharing was strongly discouraged, as dial-up time cost $30/hour back then, or about $250/hour in today's dollars.
So we would punch our code on a tape, dial in just long enough to run the tape and get our printout, and hang up right away.
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you can't provide basic needs to your population, it doesn't matter how good the scientists are
soviet union was actually very good at providing basic needs (food, housing, education, medical care) to its population. in fact much better than even the US does right now. that is not the reason ussr collapsed
Ukrainians that died in holodomor caused by Stalin disagree
Re: Reverse-engineering the Globus INK, a Soviet spaceflight navigation computer
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
soviet union was actually very good at providing basic needs (food, housing, education, medical care) to its population. in fact much better than even the US does right now. that is not the reason ussr collapsed
Ukrainians that died in holodomor caused by Stalin disagree
Aha checked your comments and you are clearly a russian. Half your comments are about defending russia. The other half is about "NATO is bad".