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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @08:43PM
I am genuinely curious.
As am I. And I am genuinely happy to share with you what I know and what I can prove.
If you say the earth is flat, what kind of flat earth model are we talking about?
I say that the Earth is flat as far as I can personally see. I will be the first one to admit that this perhaps is not too far: but it is far enough to convince me that the Earth is not a convex sphere 6397 km in radius.
I can easily spot vessels (that I have the schematics for and know their dimensions) well beyond the alleged convexity of such a sphere. One of those vessels is about 8m high at the body, and if you include the mast it is about 13.5m high. On a clear day, I can see all of it when it is more than 20km away from me, by using a camera with an optical zoom of x83. When it apparently 'sinks' below the horizon, I set up a refraction telescope that has an objective lens with a focal point at 90cm. I use an eye piece with a focal length of 45mm with this objective lens, which brings up the optical magnification to x200, and then I can clearly see the whole vessel again until it disappears into the haze. The altitude of the camera and the telescope is between 3.7 to 3.8m, and I have verified the trigonometry that I used to be sure how much of the vessel should be hidden at that distance.
There is no plausible combination of atmospheric attenuation, optical illusions, thermal inversions or lens and measurement error to account for what I am able to see: sometimes, when viewing conditions are not optimal, I see ocean swell, distorted images, reflections and the like. But I have repeated this experiment enough times to be able to know when I get a sharp and clear image, because I also have had enough crappy images to compare it with. Plus, I am taking it to the limit: my target should be completely hidden from the alleged curvature.
This of course does not prove that the whole Earth is flat. However, if the Earth is NOT flat and "has to" be a convex sphere (for whatever reason), then it must have a much much higher radius than 6397 km
How do you explain tides
I cannot explain tides (though I have encountered various 'crazy' models about them) but I can tell you that I do not believe they are explained by the theory of gravity. Not only tide charts for different parts of the world report cycles that are not consistent with a 24h period, but if gravity was the cause of tides, then tides would be observed in every large body of water: but closed seas, lakes and rivers all lack tides. So all I can gather is that gravity cannot be responsible for tides because, if it were, it would not discriminate between oceans and contained bodies of water.
day-night cycle
The model that seems to fit the most to what I observe is that the Sun's light is localized, the Sun acting like a spotlight of sorts as it circles around the Earth, and that it cannot illuminate the totality of the Earth's surface at once. Surely it appears to go "below" the horizon in everyday life, but I have seen the Sun set over dry deserts and also at high altitudes (where the atmospheric effects are minimized) and I took note how it diminishes in apparent angular size, something that is consistent with an object moving away towards the horizon: if you get lucky, you can see it reducing its size quite noticeably as it retreats, requiring no special instrument to measure it. Also, as Sunlight cannot penetrate the ocean forever having a depth where the column density of the water is simply too high for Sunlight to penetrate (around 200m if I am not mistaken), so it is not outrageous to infer the same about the atmosphere.
the usual "hot topics" in the discussion?
I am not sure what you refer to exactly. I guess that the basic "hot topic" would be that if the Earth is flat, or even "flat enough" to still have a globular shape, it is quite different than the sizes quoted by modern astronomy, and the theory of gravity is right out of the window, which forces the re-examination of the heavenly bodies, the nature and distance of the Sun and the Moon, all that.
Out of what I am guessing you are asking, I can also tell you that if what we know about gyroscopic behavior is true, then I deduce the Earth to be motionless: once you spin a gyroscope then its orientation should be fixed, and it will resist change in angular direction (it will 'point' to the same star, ignoring the Earth's rotation below it). But this is not so: try as I might, I could never observe this.
Two points here: I realized that the artificial horizon in aircraft (I have flown aircraft myself) is a purely mechanical device. You calibrate it while you are in the ground to level it with the ground, and neither the convexity, nor the rotation of the Earth is ever taken into account. Aircraft fly and navigate according to machinery built for a stationary and flat Earth.
Point two: I have served in the military, artillery division: never did we account for any rotation or convexity while executing, and we executed some pretty neat shots.
or provide some link?
I am not sure what to tell you, because I would really hate to influence you with any one video or post. Per your remark it is a hot topic, and there is a lot of ranting out there. There is proof, almost proof, clues, hints, bitching, plain stupidity and disinformation. There is a lot of good information, but a lot of, well, no so good. You should really try to see for yourself. For me, there is a guy that appears to be quite objective and honest, so maybe you want to hear what he has to say. Try and search youtube for "The Ultimate Litmus Test", and perhaps this guy [youtube.com]. All amateur stratospheric balloons are pretty awesome too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @11:04PM
Also Eratosthenes, numbnuts. Start with the basics. I'm even giving you room to get creative here with your hypothesis about the sun moving around above a flat earth.
How does a stick cast a shadow one place when another stick in another place casts no shadow at the same time?