Submitted by The source code for Apollo 11’s guidance computer has been available for a while (Google hosted it several years ago, for instance), but would you know how to find it or search through it? As of this week, it’s almost ridiculously easy. Former NASA intern Chris Garry has posted the entire Apollo Guidance Computer source code on GitHub, giving you a good peek at the software that took NASA to the Moon. As Reddit users point out, it’s clear that the developers had a mighty sense of humor — line 666 of the lunar landing turns up a “numero mysterioso,” and there’s even a reference to radio DJ Magnificent Montague’s classic “burn, baby, burn.”
Yes, it’s been available for a while, but any moment to reflect on one of man’s greatest technological achievements is a moment worth savouring.
Perhaps not the greatest technological achievement… but arguably one of the greatest overall.
Just the other day I watched the descent video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_2553605597&fe…)
It shows that as great as the technology was, the immense fortitude of those involved was astounding. They achieved what they did with far less technology than we have today, but we’re unwilling to be as bold as they were to move the frontier onward.
Sure there have been other great achievements but there’s something about landing a human being on another world and returning them back to Earth? For thousands of years what lay beyond the Earths atmosphere was `the heavens`… Being able to say been there and brought back samples is truly amazing to put it mildly.
I totally agree. What I’m expressing is the ill-formed and poorly expressed thought that this wasn’t just a technical achievement but one of sheer will. They did what they did with comparatively little technology.
The fact that we’re not on Mars today and that human space flight beyond LEO seems to always be 20 years out is always blamed on the lack of technology. It’s really the (aggregate) lack of will to do it that holds us back.
I do agree that the moon landings were the high water mark for our species. But it wasn’t just our tools that made it happen.
There were no moon landings.
I hope you’re joking/trolling. There are some people who think we never went to the moon. They are called idiots.
think about how fake moon video footage works to a layman. that’s mostly due to ignorance of average person.
physics in low gravity+vacuum are so different from what we are used to on earth – moon flag was flapping around in a strange way in vacuum on the footage, odd misalignment of shadows on pictures and moon buggy video looked like it was recorded on earth and slowed down 2x, the very sharp black/white contrast on pictures, etc.
all of was explained by experts, and after that i stopped doubting.
even after explaining it all – one thing remains. it was still an insane technological leap at the time, and that makes many conspiracy-minded people suspicious, especially if consider how many (often fatal) technical failures the road to the moon landing was paved with.
Edited 2016-07-13 12:06 UTC
You’d think they’d factor in the fact that there were many fatalities along the way that they learned from and that was why they were successful.
Not many, but three.
At least, on the US side. At that time, we weren’t learning from Russian fatalities, though.
What’s your proof wise guy? Some video footage from Nasa? Do a little research and see who the real idiots are.
I shouldn’t feed the trolls, but this is coming from a self-proclaimed creationist, which automatically lowers your credibility in my book. Now you’re telling me that something that definitely did happen didn’t? Uh huh. Go somewhere else. Next you’ll try to say that some biblical figures lived in Missouri or something.
I appreciate and value true Science but if you’re implying that Scientism is anything but another religion or cult then perhaps you should do some research. Science can no more explain our true origins or our destinies than creationism. Chances are you also believe in evolution.
I am not trying to gain credibility BTW.
Look into the moon landing conspiracy for yourself and see what you think. Once you’ve done that, then you could fairly argue for or against it.
While you’re at it why don’t you look into the flat earth, the firmament and the van allen radiation belts. Expand your mind. Test everything.
You don’t say. LOL.
Someone up-voted this merde?
I did. I think anyone, who is so fundamentally dumb as to accept in the XXI century the idea that the earth is flat, needs all the help they can get…
Lol!
I dare you guys to look into the flat earth stuff. Try to debunk it.
During a lunar eclipse, the Earth casts a round shadow on the moon, whether or not the moon is directly over head. The only shape that can do this is a sphere.
Even a flat, circular disc can not do this.
At least, that’s part of how the Greeks figured out a round Earth more than two thousand years ago.
http://www.testingtheglobe.com/conclusions.html
You realize your link uses the bible, of all things, to support the idea that the Earth is flat, right? That’s about as credible as simply saying `the Earth is flat because I said so`.
You do realize that the bible is certainly not the only thing supporting the idea of the flat earth. It just so happens to echo the concept. There are many non-biblical reasons for the flat earth in the link I posted. Here’s the link again for anyone who missed it :
http://www.testingtheglobe.com/conclusions.html
We are being told these days that ancient people were idiots and that we are the smart ones. That legends, myths, etc. are nothing more than stories and that goes for the bible too.
The sceptics of the flat earth are saying that the bible is wrong, Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Norse, Irisish, Mayan, Incan, and Navajo Cosmology is all wrong. That you can’t trust your senses or even scientific fact that there is no curvature. Go on and trust Nasa then, who have been caught lying to us repeatedly. Why not look into the origin of Nasa?
How does the crescent moon change angle as I travel further south? When I’ve been in the Arctic Circle, it looks like a C, whereas when I’ve been on the equator it’s looked more like a Cheshire cat grin. That makes it pretty obvious to me that the Earth can’t be flat, because I must have been rotated around 70 degrees between the two experiences. Carry on further south and the direction of the crescent continues to change, almost as if I was rotating around the surface of a near-sphere. But you don’t have to worry about travelling far to see this effect (which is good because I’d imagine you might be uncomfortable leaving your own town, and probably don’t hold a passport) – just contact some of your friends from around the globe and ask them for a photo of the crescent moon around the same date. Plot these against their supposed latitude and see what happens.
I suppose you probably don’t believe that Japan exists either, since you haven’t seen it yourself. Or Australia, or <insert another country you’ve never been to>.
The fossil record provides far more hard evidence for evolution than some fictional tome written centuries ago and modified to suit the will of the people in power at the time.
It can easily be shown that the technology didn’t exist at the time to fake the moon landing footage. Stanley Kubrick, arguably the best filmmaker at that time, filmed a moon scene around the same time using the best special effects of the day. You can see it in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a nice bit of cinematography, but is clearly lacking in realism compared to actual moon surface footage.
There are always weird hypotheses that try to explain everything, but when you look at actual evidence, very few of these can ever graduate to full-blown theories. Accepting a hypothesis that doesn’t have the hard evidence to back it up seems very strange to anyone with a moderate level of education and a grain of common sense, and seems to mostly happen with poorly educated people in the fantasy that there’s more to their disappointing life than there actually is.
That’s what Kubrick wanted you to think.
Seriously, though, it’s a worrying phenomenon that a notable minority of people are perfectly willing to accept and use technology, or things that were created using technology, every day yet maintain such an anti-science stance.
P.S. “quote parent” didn’t handle the angle brackets in the comment.
on one of man’s greatest technological achievements
Shouldn’t we say “human‘s”…?
Well, here’s the thing. The whole “man means only male” doesn’t hold etymological water. Words change meaning over time, but “man” as a placeholder for “human” has a long long history:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/man#Etymology
Very simple: it’s the difference between:
“Men’s greatest achievement”
and
“Man’s greatest achievement”.
Fair enough, just a thought. Can’t believe I was marked down 2 points for posing the question…
My guess is, you were marked down because it has the marks of Polical Correctness triggering/virtue signaling, which is becoming increasing repulsive, thankfully.
The problem is, “human” is no better than man… it’s practically the Latin equivalent of “man”. I didn’t vote you down, but I commented because it is just overtly PC propaganda to insist “man” refers only ever to the male of the species.
Thanks for the info, I feel more educated on the subject now
“…it’s practically the Latin equivalent of…”
Used to think as you, until translation assignments at school started. Not like ‘translating’ Hex to Binary.
On translating human languages you are ‘avatar’-izing alien concepts. Translating is a performing art.
Advanced translators doesn’t stand by their dictionaries.
But doesn’t that, by your definition, make ‘man’ synonymous with ‘mankind’?
Really takes the teeth out of the statenent if Armstrong only effectively said: One small step for us lot is actually a giant leap for us lot.
I much prefer the theory which has the missing ‘a’ being a radio glitch.
Just couple of months ago I finished a book “Digital apollo” that went through the entire Apollo development process from the perspective of human-machine interface and the main problem was – how to put a man in the middle so that astronauts were not just riding the rocket. The issue was that from mathematical and programming point, it would’ve been best if no human would intervened the flow. At least that was the initial theory. Of course we know now that human decision was indeed critical in estimating a reasonable landing spot but it was quite funny to read that there were two parties with wildly different perspectives – the test pilots, who wanted to do EVERYTHING by themselves and the rocketmen, who wanted to trust EVERYTHING to computers. So the task of AGC was to meet somewhere in the middle.
And of course the process of programming was immense – you had to literally FREEZE the code 3-4 months before launch, as the nice ladies started to wind the wire through the iron loops to actually create the physical copy of the software. MIT was really baffled with this and the fact that it is not possible to make any last minute changes. At that time, the software was something you could literally hold in your hands and it weighed quite a lot.
Edited 2016-07-13 09:19 UTC
Pretty sure exact same code was used for a key Russian communications satellite.
Only Clint and Donald can save us.
Don’t know how willing where reds on ‘imitating’ blues. From what at the time came to be known, They actually tried to ‘differ’ -as a kind of doctrine, down to the light bulbs sockets.
It would be great a rewrite in a high-level language like Python (even if it were non-functional code).