Tindarormkimcha's thread

[bknight]

For  Tindarormkimcha

Since you are so interested in popular writings on Apollo.  Here is a well written layman's article put up on Ars Technica about the guidance computer and the program alarms that threatened the A11 landing.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/no-a-checklist-error-did-not-almost-derail-the-first-moon-landing/

I hadn't read that, thanks.  All I watched were some NOVA (I believe) documentaries that said in essence the same thing, Jack Garman's check list for all the error codes helped get over the critical nature of the message.

[JayUtah]

I have read the Clavius account, I was just referencing the part where several other viewers had seen the bottle..
Sorry for my bad referencing.

Yes, thanks for the clarification.  The claims about several other viewers having seen it and having written in to the West Australian about it are part of Bennett and Percy's Una Ronald story.  To my knowledge, The Blunder has not weighed in on that story or any aspect of it.

[JayUtah]

For  Tindarormkimcha

Since you are so interested in popular writings on Apollo.  Here is a well written layman's article put up on Ars Technica about the guidance computer and the program alarms that threatened the A11 landing.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/no-a-checklist-error-did-not-almost-derail-the-first-moon-landing/

I sent that link over to my software development department yesterday and we talked about it at lunch.  Don's article, on which the Ars Technica piece borrows heavily, has been around for quite a while.

[bknight]

I have read the Clavius account, I was just referencing the part where several other viewers had seen the bottle..
Sorry for my bad referencing.

Yes, thanks for the clarification.  The claims about several other viewers having seen it and having written in to the West Australian about it are part of Bennett and Percy's Una Ronald story.  To my knowledge, The Blunder has not weighed in on that story or any aspect of it.

As you have stated, AULIS took down any kind of rebuttal communication, obviously for good reason.
I viewed the initial walk and never saw anything except the poor video quality.  Of course I wasn't looking for a hoax, just marveling at the accomplishment.

[JayUtah]

Integrated Circuits:

First concieved...1949
First fabricated...1958

The informal "computer chip" leaves the meaning open to interpretation, but likely because the original author of that statement is ignorant.  That wording has been passed around a half-dozen web sites with no clear provenance.

Yes, integrated circuits were not new technology in the Apollo era.  Entire CPUs on one integrated circuit, not quite yet.  But the point is that after you make the qualitative leap to that type of circuit encapsulation, the rest of the argument is just scale.  Even today we're still piling more and more functions into single IC packages.  There hasn't been any qualitative shift of that ilk since 1960 or so.

AGC memory? Sufficient to it's task. They weren't trying to run Call of Duty on it.

Even computer-literate people today are only now reacquainting themselves (via the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino) with the notion of embedded digital microcontrollers.  Embedded systems are not engineered the same way general-purpose computers are, although they use some of the same techniques and components.

One of my assignments in college was a minimal guidance system.  I used simple, custom ALU components and only twelve words of erasable storage.  You can use only six words if you don't need to change the flight path after launch.  There was at least one pre-Apollo missile guidance system that used drum storage as its primary memory.  Eldon Hall's book goes into appreciable detail about the AGC's hardware pedigree.

[smartcooky]

In 1969 computer chips had not been invented. The maximum computer memory was 256k, and this was housed in a large air conditioned building. In 2002 a top of the range computer requires at least 64 Mb of memory to run a simulated Moon landing, and that does not include the memory required to take off again once landed. The alleged computer on board Apollo 11 had 32k of memory. That's the equivalent of a simple calculator.

I was fiddling with RTL chips in my science classes at high school... that was in 1968-71. These chips had been used in the Space Program since 1962.

Next!

[Andromeda]

Of course the really glaring error in the "the onboard computer only had 32k of memory" argument is that it overlooks the enormous banks of computers in Mission Control.

[raven]

To put it simply, Tindarormkimcha, reality has its own weight, while computer simulation must simulate the world itself. If you drop a ball, you don't need to do any calculations, but a simulation of dropping a ball would.
It's noteworthy that I have found no mention of the computer claims in Bill Kaysing's book, at least the preview on Google Books, despite being nearly contemporary with Apollo. This kind of claim comes from people who don't realize just how astounding the advances of computers have been. People hold in their pockets computers comparable to the supercomputers of the nineteen eighties.

[BazBear]

In 1969 computer chips had not been invented. The maximum computer memory was 256k, and this was housed in a large air conditioned building. In 2002 a top of the range computer requires at least 64 Mb of memory to run a simulated Moon landing, and that does not include the memory required to take off again once landed. The alleged computer on board Apollo 11 had 32k of memory. That's the equivalent of a simple calculator.

I was fiddling with RTL chips in my science classes at high school... that was in 1968-71. These chips had been used in the Space Program since 1962.

Next!

I doubt if Tinda-whatever (or whoever he's cribbing from) understands the difference between an IC "computer chip" and a microprocessor "computer chip". As you noted SSI ICs had been around since the early 60's. Even the first microprocessors were just around the corner by the time of Apollo, with the Intel 4004 being released in '71.

[Echnaton]

As the Ars Technica article points out, the design brilliance of the Apollo guidance computer was in the software.  It was designed to be fault tolerant in a way that allowed it to focus on high priority tasks.   It didn't need a particularly elegant human interface because the operators were technologically savvy and were trained to work with the a minimal interface.   Learning history may be harder than simply making up bogus comparisons, but it is so much more interesting.

[Zakalwe]

I believe those were used in a simulation. That is, as part of the flight training of the Apollo astronauts,  closed circuit cameras linked to controls in the LM and CSM and moved over the model in response, the video being displayed in the 'windows'. A similar system was used for aircraft flight simulators  before real time computer graphics became practical for this.

It was known as Project LOLA- Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach, which consisted of four separate models to simulate the Moon from 200 miles up.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/multimedia/project-lola.html#.Vbk3nfmIlZg

https://archive.org/details/1964-L-05924

https://archive.org/search.php?query=LOLA%20simulator

[Echnaton]

I doubt if Tinda-whatever (or whoever he's cribbing from) understands the difference between.....

Say no more!

[Zakalwe]

Even the appearance of an eejit like Tinda-whathisface can be a vehicle to learning new stuff. I remember a scene in "From The Earth to the Moon" where the LOLA camera "crashes" into the Moon model during a training session. I was never able to find any info on the simulator until Tinda-whathisface showed some images of it, which lead me to the detail in the post above.

Here's a document by Ellis J White describing the LOLA simulator in more detail.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19680017961.pdf

Cleaver people, these NASA hoax creators. Imagine creating all this detail just to support the hoax.....you would think that it would have been easier just to go to the blooming Moon (cue That Mitchell and Web Sound video!)

[dwight]

Zakalwe, if you are interested I have several bits of documentation on the sim setup. One was IIRC published in SMPTE because of its innovative TV arangement. I will need to dig them up though.

[Zakalwe]

Zakalwe, if you are interested I have several bits of documentation on the sim setup. One was IIRC published in SMPTE because of its innovative TV arangement. I will need to dig them up though.

Yes please!