Apollo 11 50 years ago

[chopper_nut]

For those who are interested, there is a website that has film and audio from Apollo 11 which launched 50 years ago tonight.

Apollo 11 Real time

Follow along with man kinds greatest achievement

[toprob]

That's an amazing link, they've certainly put some work into that:)
Yes, I can remember this, I was 13, and already a bit of a nerd. Now I look back, where did those 50 years go? Why don't we have moon bases? Those who put together the moon landing were certainly punching above their weight, and the guys who actually did the trip were a lot braver than they should have been...

[chopper_nut]

The really amazing thing about Apollo is that a lot of the core technologies were developed in the 1950s. Why haven't we progressed??? Because the general public has the attention span of a small child. Even when Apollo 12 launched in November, people were already calling for the program to be scrapped. The most basic misunderstanding was that Apollo at it's peak, consumed around 2% of the US budget (1966) and for the rest of the program less than 1%. All of that money was spent on earth creating jobs and investing in technology that the world is still benefiting from.... but I digress.

It is kind of amazing that they were as successful as they were by todays standards. They would never be able to move as fast as they did nowadays because of health and safety and all of that stuff.

"If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life." Gus Grissom

[Charl]

I was in Lucerne in 1969, and watched the drama unfold in grainy B+W on a tiny television screen.
I wondered what could possibly have driven a nation to undertake this journey, at such immense cost, and what the benefit might be, to them or humankind.
Apart from "Stickin' it to the Russkies", I still wonder even today.

[cowpatz]

In comparison to the computer power they had then they should now be able to get to the moon with just a Sony Playstation.

[emfrat]

Charl, if you watch "Dr Strangelove" again, the attitude is well demonstrated, towards the end in the War Room scenes

ATB, Mike

[emfrat]

In comparison to the computer power they had then they should now be able to get to the moon with just a Sony Playstation.

CP, a few years back NASA made a world wide appeal for 8" floppy gear, to keep the Shuttle operational.
And our new you-beaut submarines, still a-building in France, apparently will have less computing power than a Playstation - but who cares, after all it's just taxpayers money

Take care
Mike

[chopper_nut]

Much has been made of the computing power that ran Apollo. By todays standards, it was puny. In actual fact though, there were four computers in the Apollo (CSM/LM) stack. They were able to get away with such tiny computing power due to the fact that they weren't concerned with graphical interfaces. The AGC ran on a verb noun system where you punched in a verb (Verb 37 = run program) and then entered the program number (verb 37 enter, 52 enter. That ran the P52 IMU alignment program) The AGC was only there to check and realign the instrumentation (IMU, GDC) against the State Vector that was computed by the Real Time Computer Complex on the ground and uplinked to the space craft. Now days, due to ergonomics and CRM, computers would have to have graphical interfaces, I'm pretty sure this is what is going into Orion. So the computing power to go to the moon now, will end up being somewhat greater than it was during Apollo.

[SUBS17]

Much has been made of the computing power that ran Apollo. By todays standards, it was puny. In actual fact though, there were four computers in the Apollo (CSM/LM) stack. They were able to get away with such tiny computing power due to the fact that they weren't concerned with graphical interfaces. The AGC ran on a verb noun system where you punched in a verb (Verb 37 = run program) and then entered the program number (verb 37 enter, 52 enter. That ran the P52 IMU alignment program) The AGC was only there to check and realign the instrumentation (IMU, GDC) against the State Vector that was computed by the Real Time Computer Complex on the ground and uplinked to the space craft. Now days, due to ergonomics and CRM, computers would have to have graphical interfaces, I'm pretty sure this is what is going into Orion. So the computing power to go to the moon now, will end up being somewhat greater than it was during Apollo.

No...it was just a stop watch and a clock no computers what so ever. The calculations were done on the ground prior to launch by Neil Armstrong and John Glenn no one else was involved. The calculations took 4 days without sleep and took up a 400 meter square board. There were no women involved in this at all that is pure lies and fiction. The data used is a template that is how NASA launches SpaceShips to this day.

[SUBS17]

I was in Lucerne in 1969, and watched the drama unfold in grainy B+W on a tiny television screen.
I wondered what could possibly have driven a nation to undertake this journey, at such immense cost, and what the benefit might be, to them or humankind.
Apart from "Stickin' it to the Russkies", I still wonder even today.

HumanKind benefits greatly from this as it is a marvellous achievement for a race. Sentient Alien races will come here someday in the future and very much like HumanKind in nature. They are a good natured friendly people who technically would have to hyper sleep for thousands of years in order to get here. Such Astronauts would be astounded that HumanKind put people on the moon. So although it might seem a waste to some HumanKind benefits greatly from it later. It was found that there is less gravity on the dark side of the moon which reinforces the purpose of the moon as being deliberately created to stabilise the weather system and so goes against the Big Bang Theory in that everything was created by someone. In the future HumanKind will gain more tech and be able to visit all of the planets in the solar system and create big projects easily with benefits of a Harmonious Law Abiding society.
To go to the moon was part of the Tech Tree for HumanKind.

[Charl]

Charl, if you watch "Dr Strangelove" again, the attitude is well demonstrated, towards the end in the War Room scenes
ATB, Mike

Yeah!
It was a time of monumental national ego, I love the story of the 1959 Khrushchev visit to Washington.
The cost would have been astronomical, never mind the extraordinary risk involved.

[chopper_nut]

No...it was just a stop watch and a clock no computers what so ever. The calculations were done on the ground prior to launch by Neil Armstrong and John Glenn no one else was involved. The calculations took 4 days without sleep and took up a 400 meter square board. There were no women involved in this at all that is pure lies and fiction. The data used is a template that is how NASA launches SpaceShips to this day.

.... I honestly don't know where to start with this.... There were a huge number of computers used in Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Shuttle. The RTCC (The aforementioned Real Time Computer Complex) did most of the work calculating State Vectors and burns for Apollo. As I stated, there were four computers in the Apollo stack responsible for different functions, Gemini had one and the Shuttle had three in the one vehicle. The idea that all calculations were worked out by hand first is absurd... why? Because a .0001 second deviation in burn time or a .0001 degree variation in trajectory (which happened on most manoeuvres which is why multiple Mid Course Correction burns were required) would have rendered any calculations made before the flight null and void. Think about it before you post such nonsense.
As for women involved, there were a number although, like today the numbers were small compared to the men. However Margaret Hamilton at MIT wrote code for the AGC, Poppy Northcutt was a computer engineer at NASA and Katherine Johnson and her peers were involved from the earliest days of spaceflight working on various guidance problems although the film released recently had to dumb it down for the audience.

All of this information is out there, it has been peer reviewed and is factual.

[emfrat]

Well said, Nick!

[toprob]

Yes, SUBS17's posts are always entertaining, I'm never sure if he's winding us up...
But I would suspect that trying to argue against him would be futile.

[Charl]

.... I honestly don't know where to start with this....

Don't we have a "Like" button or an "Upvote" one around here?

No arguing it was a superb team effort, didn't NASA employ 100's of thousands at one point?
Amazing. Just... the Biggest.

[SUBS17]

No...it was just a stop watch and a clock no computers what so ever. The calculations were done on the ground prior to launch by Neil Armstrong and John Glenn no one else was involved. The calculations took 4 days without sleep and took up a 400 meter square board. There were no women involved in this at all that is pure lies and fiction. The data used is a template that is how NASA launches SpaceShips to this day.

.... I honestly don't know where to start with this.... There were a huge number of computers used in Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Shuttle. The RTCC (The aforementioned Real Time Computer Complex) did most of the work calculating State Vectors and burns for Apollo. As I stated, there were four computers in the Apollo stack responsible for different functions, Gemini had one and the Shuttle had three in the one vehicle. The idea that all calculations were worked out by hand first is absurd... why? Because a .0001 second deviation in burn time or a .0001 degree variation in trajectory (which happened on most manoeuvres which is why multiple Mid Course Correction burns were required) would have rendered any calculations made before the flight null and void. Think about it before you post such nonsense.
As for women involved, there were a number although, like today the numbers were small compared to the men. However Margaret Hamilton at MIT wrote code for the AGC, Poppy Northcutt was a computer engineer at NASA and Katherine Johnson and her peers were involved from the earliest days of spaceflight working on various guidance problems although the film released recently had to dumb it down for the audience.

All of this information is out there, it has been peer reviewed and is factual.

Apollo 11 Neil used a stop watch, calculations were done prior to launch by Neil Armstrong and John Glenn on a 400 meter square board and took 4 days without sleep to setup. Those calculations are still used by NASA to this day. Computers back then were used for timing and that was it. Neil piloted using just a stop watch and a clock, later SpaceShips had computers but the entire Apollo flights were done using the board, a clock and a stop watch. They never spent millions of dollars on a pen either, someone else went ahead and made them and got a patent for them but Apollo used pencils the entire time due to the huge cost of such bulky pens.

[Charl]

No he didn't, no they weren't. No they aren't. No they weren't. No he didn't, yes and no. Not true.
To make this post not entirely silly, here's the Space Pen Story

SUBS, one day you should take a little time and explain to us what life is like in your universe.
It must be a strange place indeed.

[chopper_nut]

This is getting out of hand. I've stated why all computations couldn't possibly have been worked out beforehand... as a side note, John Glenn had left NASA before the Gemini program had started let alone Apollo. Apollo did use pens because in using a pencil, it creates tiny particles that can float behind an instrument panel and create problems. Aldrin also used a pen, not a pencil to set a circuit breaker in the LM after the bakerlite cap was knocked off.

[SUBS17]

No...it was just a stop watch and a clock no computers what so ever. The calculations were done on the ground prior to launch by Neil Armstrong and John Glenn no one else was involved. The calculations took 4 days without sleep and took up a 400 meter square board. There were no women involved in this at all that is pure lies and fiction. The data used is a template that is how NASA launches SpaceShips to this day.

.... I honestly don't know where to start with this.... There were a huge number of computers used in Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Shuttle. The RTCC (The aforementioned Real Time Computer Complex) did most of the work calculating State Vectors and burns for Apollo. As I stated, there were four computers in the Apollo stack responsible for different functions, Gemini had one and the Shuttle had three in the one vehicle. The idea that all calculations were worked out by hand first is absurd... why? Because a .0001 second deviation in burn time or a .0001 degree variation in trajectory (which happened on most manoeuvres which is why multiple Mid Course Correction burns were required) would have rendered any calculations made before the flight null and void. Think about it before you post such nonsense.
As for women involved, there were a number although, like today the numbers were small compared to the men. However Margaret Hamilton at MIT wrote code for the AGC, Poppy Northcutt was a computer engineer at NASA and Katherine Johnson and her peers were involved from the earliest days of spaceflight working on various guidance problems although the film released recently had to dumb it down for the audience.

All of this information is out there, it has been peer reviewed and is factual.

Those women had nothing to do with the calculations involving the Apollo flight at all contrary to a certain very fictional movie. There are 4 computers on the command module and that is it, they are responsible for life support only. Neil Armstrong flew using a stop watch, clock and board and that was it using the calculations that Neil and John Glenn had come up with prior to launch. They had no data back then that could be used for a computer for the flight, the data gained from those early flights led to computers being put in later Spaceships such as the Space Shuttle.

[SUBS17]

This is getting out of hand. I've stated why all computations couldn't possibly have been worked out beforehand... as a side note, John Glenn had left NASA before the Gemini program had started let alone Apollo. Apollo did use pens because in using a pencil, it creates tiny particles that can float behind an instrument panel and create problems. Aldrin also used a pen, not a pencil to set a circuit breaker in the LM after the bakerlite cap was knocked off.

John Glenn was still at NASA and was instrumental in coming up with new calculations when Apollo 13 lost control in order to guide the Spaceship back to Earth.