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Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

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Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#31

Post by throwanem »

KineticLensman wrote: post #4
generj wrote: post #2

I am fascinated they used 60 pounds and a large amount of space for this teleprinter. At 30K per pound of payload that is $1.8 million per flight. Really shows how important reliable printed updates were considered. And all the flaws of the printer that were managed around - turning it off to save power and prevent it overheating with specific tones.

> I am fascinated they used 60 pounds and a large amount of space for this teleprinter. IIRC the Zion space habitat in Neuromancer had a state-of-the-art line printer which at one point spews continuous-fold paper into the weightless environment. They had however got rid of the slide-rules that were essential in early-era Arthur C Clarke spaceships

That was Haniwa, not Zion. The printer was spewing paper because someone had put a laser through its faceplate while Corto was taking the ship.

Also, Haniwa is described explicitly and implicitly as an exoatmospheric luxury yacht, and thus likely wasn't designed for high acceleration. Also, I'm pretty sure it was a thermal printer, not a line printer as here. Also, Neuromancer is period-piece literary sf. So I'm not necessarily sure how relevant it is here.

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#32

Post by dylan604 »

eddieroger wrote: post #3
generj wrote: post #2

I am fascinated they used 60 pounds and a large amount of space for this teleprinter. At 30K per pound of payload that is $1.8 million per flight. Really shows how important reliable printed updates were considered. And all the flaws of the printer that were managed around - turning it off to save power and prevent it overheating with specific tones.

I was pretty stuck by that, too, and it made me wonder if maybe I don't understand or underestimate the value of paper transmission. I suppose if radio communication is good but flaky, or for persistence of instruction, like procedures, then it would be good for them to be able to print. But at such a cost!

Maybe they remember the situation with Apollo 13 where they had no way to right down the procedures other than by hand and using space pages from the existing printed documents. You then had the issue where the guys were so fatigued and CO2 levels getting to a point of making vision blurry. I could see where that might have factored into the decision of wanting to avoid all of that with the ability of printing new/modified procedures.

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#33

Post by [deleted] »

samstave wrote: post #30
DaSHacka wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Challenger was sabotage Mind explaining your reasoning? As someone not very familiar with the details, I'm curious

As much as Dylan wants to denegrate my post: I have always believed the Shuttle was sabotaged. I watched it live when it happened when I was a kid and followed all aspect from the lead up (we voted for Kristy in my school IIRC) -- but there has always been a lot of weird strangeness about the shuttle and the demise of its occupants. Ant to Dylan - relax - I can speculatively hold dystopian-sci-fi what-ifs without you…

[deleted]

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#34

Post by bagels »

ghosty141 wrote: post #7
marcodiego wrote: post #5

X (twitter) is useless for threads unless you're logged in. How can I read this thread?

Yeah somebody should mirror it. In general I dont understand why people post things like this on X. Its a horrible platform.

What are some better alternatives?

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#35

Post by kens »

marcodiego wrote: post #5

X (twitter) is useless for threads unless you're logged in. How can I read this thread?

Three ways you can read the thread: a) Log into Twitter. b) Read the same thread on Mastodon [1]. c) Wait until I turn it into a blog post.

[1] https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/112124283096167861

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#36

Post by kens »

ghosty141 wrote: post #7
marcodiego wrote: post #5

X (twitter) is useless for threads unless you're logged in. How can I read this thread?

Yeah somebody should mirror it. In general I dont understand why people post things like this on X. Its a horrible platform.

Serious answer: I post things on Twitter because it is easy, lets a huge number of people read my thread, and provides easy interaction. I post the same threads to Mastodon and get orders of magnitude less interest. I also write blog posts, which take a huge amount of time (a week versus an hour) and are hit-or-miss. Sometimes they are very popular and sometimes they disappear without a trace.

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#37

Post by fred_is_fred »

samstave wrote: post #30
DaSHacka wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Challenger was sabotage Mind explaining your reasoning? As someone not very familiar with the details, I'm curious

As much as Dylan wants to denegrate my post: I have always believed the Shuttle was sabotaged. I watched it live when it happened when I was a kid and followed all aspect from the lead up (we voted for Kristy in my school IIRC) -- but there has always been a lot of weird strangeness about the shuttle and the demise of its occupants. Ant to Dylan - relax - I can speculatively hold dystopian-sci-fi what-ifs without you…

You don't need Soviet sabotage when you have poorly engineered parts and a NASA administration that ignores engineering recommendations to stop the launch. What you believe or not is not germane to the facts and whether you watched it as a kid or not does not make you an expert.

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#38

Post by dpifke »

marcodiego wrote: post #5

X (twitter) is useless for threads unless you're logged in. How can I read this thread?

From the guidelines[0]:

Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#39

Post by kens »

jdblair wrote: post #26
eigenvalue wrote: post #21

This is cool but it just makes me think the Shuttle was absurdly inefficient across the board. Why waste not just the launch weight but the engineering work on making such a specialized printer? Aren’t we talking about the late 70s/ early 80s? Surely there were commercially available printers that could have been substituted that would weigh less and wouldn’t have the overheating issues. Having unlimited government m…

Its unlikely that it was special-built for the Space Shuttle. Obviously this is speculation, but it most likely was already special-designed for a military application and just re-used in the shuttle. All of those strategic nuclear bombers that used to fly on standby 24/7 needed communications, too.

You don't need to speculate. As I explained in the thread, the Shuttle teleprinter was based on the military AN/UGC-74 teleprinter but had many modifications including new three circuit boards for the FSK decoding.

Re: Space Shuttle teleprinter reverse engineering

#40

Post by dclowd9901 »

kens wrote: post #35
marcodiego wrote: post #5

X (twitter) is useless for threads unless you're logged in. How can I read this thread?

Three ways you can read the thread: a) Log into Twitter. b) Read the same thread on Mastodon [1]. c) Wait until I turn it into a blog post. [1] https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/112124283096167861

Can I ask as a genuine question: why use twitter at all for a post like this? I’m not trying to be a Luddite or even just anti-twitter. I just don’t understand using it for long form deep topics like this. And yes I fully understand many people do use it this way, and to them I’d ask the same question.
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