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from the it'll-run-on-a-pocket-calculator dept.
Quartz reports that a former NASA intern has made a Github repository for the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer code.
The AGC code has been available to the public for quite a while–it was first uploaded by tech researcher Ron Burkey in 2003, after he'd transcribed it from scanned images of the original hardcopies MIT had put online. That is, he manually typed out each line, one by one.
"It was scanned by a airplane pilot named Gary Neff in Colorado," Burkey said in an email. "MIT got hold of the scans and put them online in the form of page images, which unfortunately had been mutilated in the process to the point of being unreadable in places." Burkey reconstructed the unreadable parts, he said, using his engineering skills to fill in the blanks.
"Quite a bit later, I managed to get some replacement scans from Gary Neff for the unreadable parts and fortunately found out that the parts I filled in were 100% correct!" he said.
The effort made the code available to any researcher or hobbyist who wanted to explore it. Burkey himself even used the software to create a simulation of the AGC: [link to YouTube video embedded in original story]
As enormous and successful as Burkey's project has been, however, the code itself remained somewhat obscure to many of today's software developers. That was until last Thursday (July 7), when former NASA intern Chris Garry uploaded the software in its entirety to GitHub, the code-sharing site where millions of programmers hang out these days.
[Continues...]
There are some funny comments in the code, which the Quartz story mentions. This one appears to have been added in 2009, and explains the naming of the file BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE.agc:
## At the get-together of the AGC developers celebrating the 40th anniversary
## of the first moonwalk, Don Eyles (one of the authors of this routine along
## with Peter Adler) has related to us a little interesting history behind the
## naming of the routine.
##
## It traces back to 1965 and the Los Angeles riots, and was inspired
## by disc jockey extraordinaire and radio station owner Magnificent Montague.
## Magnificent Montague used the phrase "Burn, baby! BURN!" when spinning the
## hottest new records. Magnificent Montague was the charismatic voice of
## soul music in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles from the mid-1950s to
## the mid-1960s.
Other comments, such as these two from the file LUNAR_LANDING_GUIDANCE_EQUATIONS.agc, are clearly a bit older:
TC BANKCALL# TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE
CADR STOPRATE# TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE
Related: World's First Integrated Circuit Microcomputer Found
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday September 06 2016, @08:41PM
Speaking of the moon, have you taken a good look at it, especially how the shadows of its features near the terminator are not geometrically consistent with that of a sphere illuminated at low angles and by infinite distance? (now is a good time for that)
You need to demonstrate this. You can't just say it and expect someone to go away and do any work to prove you wrong.
In what way are they inconsistent? What measurements have you made to prove this?
If you follow my recommendation of stalking it, you will see it. It is pointless for you to argue that "you would see it" while you have not been looking for it. First look for it, and IF you still cannot see it, THEN argue about not being able to see it.
Or you could give a time, date, and location of one of your "impossible" viewings.
I can't work out what you mean about being able to see it 22 degrees "past your own terminator".
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @09:02PM
In what way are they inconsistent?
Shadows near the terminator (day-night "line" for the surface of the moon) should be longer, and they are not. Sun shining on a sphere from infinity cannot uniformly light it up, there needs to be some specular effect, and there isn't any. It looks self-luminescent to me.
I can't work out what you mean about being able to see it 22 degrees "past your own terminator".
By "terminator" I refer to the "line" dividing day and night, on the globe model of the Earth. So, when the Sun sets for you, you are sitting on your own terminator. "22 degrees past the terminator" according to the globe Earth model, is when the Earth has rotated (taking you with it) towards the East, by 22 degrees. Now you are well within the shadow of the Earth, as is everything with an altitude lower than about 400 km, which is also the ISS altitude. Therefore, the ISS is now inside the shadow of the Earth. The ISS is not self-luminescent, and you are supposed to see it only if it reflects Sunlight. But it is impossible to reflect Sunlight when you are more than 22 degrees into the night, because ISS will be in the Earth's shadow.
Do you see now?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday September 06 2016, @09:59PM
Shadows near the terminator (day-night "line" for the surface of the moon) should be longer, and they are not.
How long should they be? Which specific feature's shadow did you measure, and how did you do so?
Sun shining on a sphere from infinity cannot uniformly light it up, there needs to be some specular effect, and there isn't any.
The moon doesn't have a shiny surface. It has a matte one. And not just matte, but rough. That makes shading of the sort I assume you're talking about hard to see, but it's there.
But if you believe there is no "specularity" where there should be, what does this mean for what you think the moon to be? Are you, then, suggesting that it is not a sphere, but another flat disc?
Do you see now?
I now understand what you mean. I still haven't seen any evidence of any "impossible" sighting of the ISS, though. At what date, time, and location did you see an illuminated ISS when you should not have been able to? Did you measure the duration and position in the sky? Did you happen to note which constellations it was passing through?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday September 06 2016, @10:12PM
PS the moon isn't just matte. The fine dust of the regolith gives it some retro-reflective qualities. This causes more light to be scattered back in the direction it came from than you would otherwise expect. This will make a full moon appear even flatter than it otherwise would.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @12:18AM
I strongly disagree with your moon arguments and data and have several counterpoints, but this is getting a very long discussion already and I have other matters to attend to. I am not deflecting you and I will try to pick this up at a later time.
I now understand what you mean.
Good!
At what date, time, and location did you see an illuminated ISS when you should not have been able to?
I am sorry, but I cannot give you my location. As soon as this stops being an issue for me, you can have my home address for what I care, topped with an open invitation to come over and help out or even oversee experiments.
What I can give you is a tip that you can get predictions from the isstracker dot com website. Use a future date, and see where the 'ISS' is to show up. Its inclination is such that if you live further north than London it will never pass directly over you, so you are out of luck. Otherwise, it is just a matter of time before it passes overhead from a place near you while you are several hours after sunset, and it should be trivial for you to find an appropriate location and time to that end.
PS: Only if you feel "sufficiently motivated", of course. Nobody is forcing anything on anybody.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday September 07 2016, @07:36AM
What I can give you is a tip that you can get predictions from the isstracker dot com website.
Who are presumably part of the flat Earth conspiracy themselves, since their calculations wouldn't make sense otherwise.
Otherwise, it is just a matter of time before it passes overhead from a place near you while you are several hours after sunset, and it should be trivial for you to find an appropriate location and time to that end.
I've seen it, several times. I've also seen it fade as it enters the Earth's shadow. I guess they didn't forget to turn the lights off that time.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 07 2016, @01:21PM
Otherwise, it is just a matter of time before it passes overhead from a place near you while you are several hours after sunset, and it should be trivial for you to find an appropriate location and time to that end.
You need more than that. You need to know when the ISS will be in sunlight and when it won't. Several hours after sunset is not that far away from sunset at the higher latitudes, particularly in summer (for whichever hemisphere you are observing from). For example, 22 degrees of rotation is not 22 degrees of separation at 45 degrees latitude (which is my latitude incidentally). Rather it is about 15 degrees of separation (divide by square root of two) due to the lesser movement of rotation at the latitude (you're closer to the axis of rotation and don't move as far). The most extreme case would be at the pole where you rotate as much as you'd like, but it won't change the apparent elevation of the Sun because you aren't actually moving anywhere.
Also, let us note that it is completely irrelevant to the discussion of the supposedly fake Moon landings whether the ISS glows or not.
Its inclination is such that if you live further north than London it will never pass directly over you, so you are out of luck.
Inclination? You blew off a bunch of physics and geometry earlier in the thread when it didn't suit you. But now the ISS has some parameter called "inclination" which actually matters. The same math and physics which can tell you very precisely where the ISS will be, is the same math and physics that tells us the Moon is something we can walk on.
(Score: 1) by EETech1 on Wednesday September 07 2016, @03:11AM
I've seen the ISS hundreds of times, and many (if not most) times it disappears suddenly as it goes into the shadow of the Earth.