...Some of my favourite DVDs are the ones detailing how the AGC was developed, or the food prep, for example.
Would that be the Spacecraft Films DVD Set, "Mission to the Moon"? If so, I was so intrigued by the extremely good part about the AGC that I did a full typescript or everything that was said. Sample below.
If anyone would like a copy PM me with your email address. It's five pages of Arial 9-point in Open Document Format (.odt). It is very informative about how the AGC was made and about the rigorous testing of the parts.
The documentaries on this DVD set are old (probably early- to mid-1960s) black-and-white TV broadcasts. They are very quaint with a few of the engineers interviewed looking very uncomfortable and as stiff as a board. Not uncomfortable because they are faking anything, but uncomfortable about the camera and being on TV. Definitely not their usual line of work.
Unformatted sample:
Spacecraft Films DVD Set — Mission to the Moon — Disc 1
Computer For Apollo0:00:00 Chapter 1.
0:00:02 John Fitch: These test engineers are checking out a sophisticated collection of telescopes, gyroscopes and electronics for Project Apollo. This guidance and navigation system will be mounted in an Apollo spacecraft, to aid our three astronauts on their voyage to the moon and return.
0:00:20 Fitch: The miniaturised computer at the very heart of this system is our story today on Science Reporter.
0:00:29 NASA Presents
0:00:33 Science Reporter
0:00:37 Computer For Apollo
0:00:41 Reporter: John Fitch, MIT
0:00:47 Fitch: Hello, I'm John Fitch, MIT Science Reporter. Today we're at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which has been given design responsibility for this guidance and navigation system, which will direct our Apollo spacecraft on the way to the moon and back.
0:01:04 Fitch: At one time, the direction of the rising sun or perhaps a winding riverbed was all that man needed in his restless search for new land. Centuries later the quadrant and the magnetic compass guided his way, even across the open sea, even after familiar landmarks had long since disappeared.
0:01:23 Fitch: But today we speak of traversing a million miles of empty space, where there is no north nor south, no rising nor setting sun, not even any up or down. It's an extremely complicated path requiring many, many measurements and millions of calculations.
0:01:41 Fitch: As you can see from this Apollo flight plan, there are several critical manoeuvres that have to be performed. After the Apollo spacecraft reaches its earth orbit, it must be injected into a translunar trajectory at just the right place in time and space.
0:01:58 Fitch: Someone has compared it to shooting at a moving target from a revolving platform, which is mounted on a train, which is going around a curve.
0:02:08 Fitch: Then at the half-way point, along about here, the programmed course must be examined for errors and possibly a mid-course correction made. There are many other similar manoeuvres, and to learn about the guidance and navigation system which will make this possible, we talk with Mr Eldon Hall, Deputy Associate Director of the Instrumentation Lab.
0:02:30 Eldon Hall: The guidance and navigation system consists of two measurement elements, controls, the computer, and the computer display and control. The inertial measurement unit, shown up here but normally down at the back, consists of gyros and accelerometers. It measures the angles and velocity of the spacecraft in this fashion.
0:02:56 Hall: The spacecraft rotates and the inertial measurement unit holds the reference, so the angles can be measured. The sextant is an instrument very similar to that used by the sailors to navigate on the surface of the earth.
0:03:10 Fitch: Now what kind of a problem might you have to solve on the way to the moon?
0:03:14 Hall: The most basic problem is to determine the position at any point in time, and that can be illustrated in these charts. The sextant shown here represents the spacecraft, and to determine the position an angle must be measured, between a point on the earth and a star. And you can see that as you move away from the earth, this angle would narrow down, thus giving the distance between the earth and the spacecraft.
0:03:48 Hall: The astronaut first positions the spacecraft so that a point on the earth, a landmark, is visible through the sextant. Then he positions the sextant angle so that the star is superimposed upon this landmark.
0:04:05 Fitch: Now what kind of a landmark might this be?
0:04:07 Hall: This one is San Francisco Bay, as you can see here. However, the Great Lakes, or Cuba, or Cape Cod, the tip of Florida — any of these points make suitable landmarks.
0:04:20 Fitch: Then through some system of mirrors you actually superimpose the star on that feature.
0:04:24 Hall: That's right. The mirrors inside the sextant will bring the star within the field of view so that we can superimpose it on the landmark.
0:04:33 Fitch: Now how is this angle actually measured?
0:04:36 Hall: It's done automatically by the computer. The astronaut must first identify to the computer the star and the landmark he is planning to use. Then, as he's positioning the spacecraft and the sextant, the computer is measuring the angle between the two.
0:04:54 Hall: When the astronaut is satisfied that the star is superimposed upon the landmark, he pushes the Mark button, telling the computer to record these angles and the time of the measurement. From that information the computer can compute the position of the spacecraft in space.
[Snip]
0:13:51 Fitch: The Apollo computers are manufactured by the Raytheon Company in Waltham, Massachusetts. The computer itself consists of two trays, one containing logic modules, the other memory modules.
0:14:04 Fitch: To learn how these modules are put together, we talk with Mr Jack Poundstone, Raytheon's Apollo engineering manager.
0:14:12 Poundstone: In this room, John, we run all of the electrical components through a screening and burning process. You know there are over 30,000 parts that go together to make this machine.
0:14:23 Poundstone: Every part is put through an electrical test and then a series of environmental stresses. Now, as an example, this girl is placing the micrologic units into a fixture that will be used in this centrifuge.
0:14:37 Poundstone: Here the fixture is spun at a very high speed and 20,000 g's of force is placed on each component.
0:14:43 Fitch: That's a lot more than it will ever experience, isn't it?
0:14:45 Poundstone: Yes, that's true, but we put more forces on, more stresses than we really expect, to ensure the high reliability.
0:14:51 Fitch: So this is really sort of a torture chamber.
0:14:53 Poundstone: That's right. In addition, we run all the parts through a leak test, to make sure there is no leaks in the can. The part is put into a high-pressure helium tank, and if there is a leak, the helium will be forced into the can.
0:15:05 Chapter 4.
0:15:08 Poundstone: Then we put it in a vacuum chamber and evacuate and test for the amount of helium coming out.
0:15:14 Poundstone: In the final phase of the screening and burning process, the girl puts the parts, as she's doing here, into a test socket. Then those parts are placed on this burning rack.
0:15:28 Poundstone: Here they will be operated for almost a week at a over-voltage stress condition.
0:15:34 Fitch: You actually are operating them.
0:15:35 Poundstone: Yes, we are operating the parts. Now any failure, any significant failure of any of our tests is cause for rejection of the entire lot of 5,000 parts.
0:15:46 Poundstone: After we've ensured that we have good components, then we want to make a module.
0:15:50 Poundstone: Now, the little cans, here, are placed in these holes in a component holder. Then we take a matrix, which is a complex wiring pattern. It's placed on the back, and the wires are folded over and welded to the leads of the micrologic unit itself. I'd like to show you now, how we make a matrix.
0:16:15 Poundstone: Here we see an operator who is placing a piece of Mylar insulator that has been heated on both sides, and this insulator has previously had a pattern of holes punched onto it. Now this is placed on this longitudinal wire winder. Now as the piece advances, strips of nickel ribbon are laid down in a longitudinal direction on the Mylar.
0:16:39 Poundstone: Next, it's taken to the vertical wire winder. Here the operator is placing it on the machine, and as the drum rotates, wires are laid down on the opposite side of the Mylar in a vertical direction. The wires will be laying down right over the areas where the holes have been punched.
0:16:57 Fitch: Some running one way on one side and others running the other way on the other side.
0:17:00 Poundstone: That's right, John. Now the next operation is to perform the welding. This is done on a automatic welding machine. With this machine we are advancing the matrix underneath these weld heads, and whenever a hole appears under a weld head the weld is commanded to drop and perform a weld, and this makes a feed-through connection from one side of the insulator to the other.
0:17:27 Poundstone: In the final operation, this girl uses a cutting tool to remove the excess pieces of wire, to give us the final configuration of our precise wiring pattern.
