so, Artemis test flight AKA Should Launch Someday, 16-Nov-2022

[CCD-Freak]

30 minutes ago, Dark Adaptation said:

Well, that's good then. Would hate to have a mission to the Moon and no pictures.

(But I'm being silly--why wouldn't there be pictures?)

Let's hope for some wonderful compositions.

I was reading this......

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-artemis-i-cameras-to-offer-new-views-of-orion-earth-moon

(^8

 

 

[Zermelo]

11 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

Nah he's too short to be an astronaut isn't he? 😄 

I believe NASA has already commissioned Northrop Grumman to create a suitable block for Mr. Cruise to stand on, when shooting any lunar scenes with his co-astronauts. 

[DaveL59]

3 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

I believe NASA has already commissioned Northrop Grumman to create a suitable block for Mr. Cruise to stand on, when shooting any lunar scenes with his co-astronauts. 

hmmm, wouldn't platform boots be easier?

[DaveS]

Going back to the core memory in the Saturn V, I remember a vid of the memory being built, lots of women (With slender fingers) carefully threading miles of incredibly thin wire through thousands of magnetic rings, and all to be dumped in the sea. It made me very angry at the waste.

[DaveL59]

The first mainframe and minicomputer systems I worked on had mag core memory, also wire-wrapped backplane interconnects etc. Of course they occupied a vast amount of space and now a basic smartphone trounces that tech for performance and capacity, but I'm glad to have worked on stuff that was at the earlier part of the tech slope and seen how things developed in leaps and bounds over the past decades.

Here's one that may interest some:

Restoring The Apollo Guidance Computer (Part 2) - The Samtec Blog

 

[Mandy D]

4 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

The first mainframe and minicomputer systems I worked on had mag core memory, also wire-wrapped backplane interconnects etc. Of course they occupied a vast amount of space and now a basic smartphone trounces that tech for performance and capacity, but I'm glad to have worked on stuff that was at the earlier part of the tech slope and seen how things developed in leaps and bounds over the past decades.

Here's one that may interest some:

Restoring The Apollo Guidance Computer (Part 2) - The Samtec Blog

 

Honeywell 516 mainframe with magnetic core memory, 14 inch winchester drives and, of course wire-wrapping everywhere and only 16 k of RAM, all programmed in octal. That was my first (and last) mainframe experience.

[DaveL59]

24 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

Honeywell 516 mainframe with magnetic core memory, 14 inch winchester drives and, of course wire-wrapping everywhere and only 16 k of RAM, all programmed in octal. That was my first (and last) mainframe experience.

Never met that one, DECsystem-10 KA & KI processors (piano-key and flashing light consoles) and ICL 1902T and occasionally some IBM thing up in Scotland that we remotely accessed. All our drives were removable, multi-platter spinning rust (RP03/RP06) along with the obligatory tape drives with vacuum tubes as the movies like to show. Not forgetting of course the tape punch/reader and the card punch/verify/sort/readers. Proper old skool tech, huge, loud and eminently kickable when it didn't do what you'd asked 😄 

[Mandy D]

16 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

Never met that one, DECsystem-10 KA & KI processors (piano-key and flashing light consoles) and ICL 1902T and occasionally some IBM thing up in Scotland that we remotely accessed. All our drives were removable, multi-platter spinning rust (RP03/RP06) along with the obligatory tape drives with vacuum tubes as the movies like to show. Not forgetting of course the tape punch/reader and the card punch/verify/sort/readers. Proper old skool tech, huge, loud and eminently kickable when it didn't do what you'd asked 😄 

Yes, all of the above. I remember the paper tape reader/puncher and bi-directional reel to reel tape drives using half inch tape which was great for making extra long VHS cassettes from as a physics teacher showed us!  Yes, the 14 inch Winchester had removeable platters, a stack of 5 or 6 discs (sorry, disks!).

[DaveL59]

17 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

Yes, all of the above. I remember the paper tape reader/puncher and bi-directional reel to reel tape drives using half inch tape which was great for making extra long VHS cassettes from as a physics teacher showed us!  Yes, the 14 inch Winchester had removeable platters, a stack of 5 or 6 discs (sorry, disks!).

yeah, modern computers even mainframes are such boring things to look at or show someone. Big bland box and maybe a single indicator light and switch, maybe a couple extra. Nothing like the old days with rows of switches and lights flickering away showing the PC and memory address etc:

And those old data-dynamics teletype terminals, a handy desk-shaker to wake you from a snooze when a console alert came in that you'd need to act on 😉 

Those little reels are DECtape, 100 block random-access tape drives, bi-directional read/write and all 🙂 

Edited November 17, 2022 by DaveL59

[DaveS]

He's now moderately happy

 

 

[CCD-Freak]

Here is a nice image from Artemis....I am sure there will be many more spectacular shots. (^8

[Dark Adaptation]

2 minutes ago, CCD-Freak said:

Here is a nice image from Artemis....I am sure there will be many more spectacular shots. (^8

Ooh, that's nice...does the Earth look a bit distorted to anyone else?

[DaveL59]

24 minutes ago, Dark Adaptation said:

Ooh, that's nice...does the Earth look a bit distorted to anyone else?

ita a model with a marble sitting on a black velvet cushion 😉 

[Dark Adaptation]

18 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

ita a model with a marble sitting on a black velvet cushion 😉 

Not CGI? That satellite looks a bit fake to me  Also marbles wouldn't be that distorted. 😉

Except I actually looked up the real image and that one's flatter, so.... 

 

[DaveL59]

Just now, Dark Adaptation said:

Not CGI? That satellite looks a bit fake to me  Also marbles wouldn't be that distorted. 😉

Except I actually looked up the real image and that one's flatter, so.... 

 

we're talking NASA 60's tech here, CGI and supercomputers weren't around then 😉

 

[Dark Adaptation]

1 minute ago, DaveL59 said:

we're talking NASA 60's tech here, CGI and supercomputers weren't around then 😉

 

Well, no, but this image is from now and we do have CGI. Doesn't it look weird to have blackness and then this illuminated metal surface? It looks almost like it was pasted on 😁

[DaveL59]

3 minutes ago, Dark Adaptation said:

Well, no, but this image is from now and we do have CGI. Doesn't it look weird to have blackness and then this illuminated metal surface? It looks almost like it was pasted on 😁

hehe yeah, I think a lot of the problem is no WDR, or at least it can't handle the very bright close surface so it's washing out. Lower shutter/exposure but enough to grab Terra in the background wouldn't be long enough to show any stars etc. Getting stars of course, longer exposure, total burn out of the ship in the image and likely flare across a big chunk of the pic too.

Maybe next time they'll fit the cameras in better locations 😉 

[Dark Adaptation]

Just now, DaveL59 said:

hehe yeah, I think a lot of the problem is no WDR, or at least it can't handle the very bright close surface so it's washing out. Lower shutter/exposure but enough to grab Terra in the background wouldn't be long enough to show any stars etc. Getting stars of course, longer exposure, total burn out of the ship in the image and likely flare across a big chunk of the pic too.

Maybe next time they'll fit the cameras in better locations 😉 

You would think that with all the work they put into it, they could at least have put the cameras in a good spot for photography. But then again, maybe they were just like "CAN WE PLEASE FINISH THIS!"

[DaveL59]

3 minutes ago, Dark Adaptation said:

You would think that with all the work they put into it, they could at least have put the cameras in a good spot for photography. But then again, maybe they were just like "CAN WE PLEASE FINISH THIS!"

Nah the ESA had those built way ahead of time I think and 6 of them at that. I guess it depends what they were thinking to use them for. Perhaps if they'd used that fancy matt-black-zero type paint to kill reflections and just add some go-faster stripes so we could see the edges of the module it'd have gotten better piccies.

Edited November 18, 2022 by DaveL59

[Dark Adaptation]

Just now, DaveL59 said:

Nah the ESA had those built way ahead of time I think and 6 of them at that. I guess it depends what they were thinking to use them for. Perhaps if they'd used that fancy matt-black-zero type paint to kill reflections and just add some go-faster stripes so we could see the edges of the module it'd have gotten better piccies.

Oh, okay, I would have thought they would do the cameras last as they would be the easiest or something. Piccies--🤣

[Alan White]

I thought they had done rather well with the varied cameras.
When you consider they are not specialist space cameras as well, just adapted or housed for space use.
Amazing and no need for a trip to Kodak as we had in the 60's and 70's ane even 80's.

[DaveL59]

22 minutes ago, Alan White said:

I thought they had done rather well with the varied cameras.
When you consider they are not specialist space cameras as well, just adapted or housed for space use.
Amazing and no need for a trip to Kodak as we had in the 60's and 70's ane even 80's.

yeah they have really, we're just having a little fun and perhaps baiting the conspiracy folks who might hit on the post on a web scan 😉 

[Dark Adaptation]

1 hour ago, DaveL59 said:

yeah they have really, we're just having a little fun and perhaps baiting the conspiracy folks who might hit on the post on a web scan 😉 

We haven't had a bite yet...

[DaveL59]

Just now, Dark Adaptation said:

We haven't had a bite yet...

yeah, fishing can be a right pain huh, bait's been in the water for ages already, maybe the flavour has been washed out and we need to renew it and re-cast?

[Dark Adaptation]

1 hour ago, DaveL59 said:

yeah, fishing can be a right pain huh, bait's been in the water for ages already, maybe the flavour has been washed out and we need to renew it and re-cast?

Not a bad idea. Got any other Artemis conspiracy theories? 😂