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- #Apollo guidance computer manual
- #Apollo guidance computer software
- #Apollo guidance computer simulator
#Apollo guidance computer simulator
I worked for Raytheon at the time and had to final test my suite of diags on the Lander Simulator at the AC Spark Plug plant at Milwakee Wisconsin. We called the modules in the Eagle computer “cordwood” as the interconnection busses were welded together to stand up to the expected vibration.
#Apollo guidance computer software
So I had to create multifunction key designations to facilitate selection from the large software diag library of the required fault isolation programs.
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The key were huge as they were designed to be used by astronauts wearing those supersized space suite gloves. The DSKY gave me a fit because the limited number of keys available on the keyboard. Hi Nancy, Please tell John Pultorak that I was the engineer who wrote all of the diagnostic programs for the Eagle Lunar Lander computer. And now you can build yourself a little piece of it. Garman remembered the 12 alarms occurring during one of the hundreds of simulations the team performed in preparation of the Apollo 11 mission, and knew it would be OK to continue. As the story goes, while the alarms were going off, computer engineer Jack Garman told guidance officer Steve Bales in mission control it was safe to continue the descent and this was relayed to the crew. But Aldrin’s reasoning was if the descent had to be aborted he didn’t want to have to turn on the guidance while they were doing their abort rocket burn to escape from crashing. The computer wasn’t designed for that amount of simultaneous input from both systems, which was why the alarms kept going off. Reportedly, Aldrin later said he kept the guidance system on while the descent radar was also on. The user interface unit was called the DSKY (display/keyboard, pronounced “disky”) an array of numerals and a calculator-style keyboard used by the astronauts to communicate with the computer.Įach Apollo mission featured two AGC computers – one in the Apollo Command Module and one in the Apollo Lunar Module. The AGC mutlitasking operating system was called the EXEC, it was capable of executing up to 8 jobs at a time. It was developed by the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory and it a pretty amazing piece of hardware in the 1960s, as it was the first computer to use integrated circuits. It didn’t have a disk drive to store any software, and only 74 kilobytes of memory that had been literally hard-wired, and all of 4 Kb of something that is sort of like RAM. The original Apollo AGC cost over $150,000. The system had to minimize fuel consumption because the spacecraft only contained enough fuel for one landing attempt. It had to control a 13,000 kg spaceship, orbiting at 3,500 kilometers per hour around the moon, land it safely within meters of a specified location and guide it back from the surface to rendezvous with a command ship in lunar orbit.
#Apollo guidance computer manual
Knowing he didn’t want to land there, Armstrong took manual control of the lunar module while Aldrin called out data from the radar and computer, guiding the Eagle to a safe landing with about 30 seconds of fuel left.Įven with that inauspicious beginning, the AGC did its job for the Apollo missions, and did it well. During the first moon landing, the AGC guided Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin towards a large crater with huge boulders around it.