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Apollo and the wonders of computers

MartinB

By MartinB
in The Astro Lounge

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MartinB

MartinB

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Looking back at the Apollo missions now I am even more in awe of the achievment than I was as a 9 year old. Back then people had an almost religious faith in technology and anything was achievable with computers. We know better now!

I've heard that Apollo 11 carried the processing power of a Sinclair Spectrum and yet it did the job perfectly.

I wouldn't trust Vista to get me to the bottom of the garden in 1 piece.

Maybe for the next Moon programme NASA should try using the latest version of Windows and use the MS CEO as the first test astronaut. That might tighten things up a bit :)

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acharris77

acharris77

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Can u imagine if they used microsoft windows to get to the moon, it would get half way then it would need a update to fix a vulunability glitch in the software, then the OS would crash and the mission would fail. lol

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Astro_Baby

Astro_Baby

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Yeah but back then they had proper programmers who could write tight code. Dont forget the original Mac could do wonders ( word processing, spreadsheeting and drawing) and all in 128k of memory.

Processing and storage was at a premium so people wrote compact code in machine language.

Its a truism that the greatest acheivements in art ( and technology) are always acheived when resistance to the medium is at its highest.

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Astro_Baby

Astro_Baby

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Slightly off topic but if they only made toasters..........

If IBM made toasters...

They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.

If Xerox made toasters...

You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.

If Maplin made toasters...

The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could buy all the parts to build your own toaster.

If University of Surrey made toasters...

They would immediately spin off a company called Surrey Toast Technology.

If Oracle made toasters...

They'd claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of bread, but when you got it home you'd discover the Bagel Engine was still in development, the Croissant Extension was three years away, and that indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke.

If Sun made toasters...

The toast would burn often, but you could get a really good cuppa Java.

Does DEC still make toasters?...

They made good toasters in the '80s, didn't they?

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters...

They would market the Reverse Polish Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If Tandem made toasters...

You could make toast 24 hours a day, and if a piece got burned the toaster would automatically toast you a new one.

If Thinking Machines made toasters...

You would be able to toast 64,000 pieces of bread at the same time.

If Cray made toasters...

They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice toaster in the world.

If The Rand Corporation made toasters...

It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every morning there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number, and the blueprints for the box would be highly classified government documents. The X-Files would have an episode about it.

If the NSA made toasters...

Your toaster would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.

If Sony made toasters...

The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.

If Timex made toasters...

They would be cheap and small quartz-crystal wrist toasters that take a licking and keep on toasting.

If Fisher Price made toasters...

"Baby's First Toaster" would have a hand-crank that you turn to toast the bread that pops up like a Jack-in-the-box.

If the Franklin Mint made toasters...

Every month, you would receive another lovely hand-crafted piece of your authentic hand-crafted Civil War pewter toaster.

If CostCo made toasters...

They'd be really cheap, as long as you bought a six-pack of 'em.

And, of course: If Microsoft made toasters...

Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it anyway. Toaster'95 would weigh 15000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them. Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters...

It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.

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Beulah

Beulah

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Looking back at the Apollo missions now I am even more in awe of the achievment than I was as a 9 year old. Back then people had an almost religious faith in technology and anything was achievable with computers. We know better now!

I've heard that Apollo 11 carried the processing power of a Sinclair Spectrum and yet it did the job perfectly.

I wouldn't trust Vista to get me to the bottom of the garden in 1 piece.

Maybe for the next Moon programme NASA should try using the latest version of Windows and use the MS CEO as the first test astronaut. That might tighten things up a bit :)

Amazing stuff...although you could do an awful lot with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum in those days....:headbang: The limitations brought out the best in the programmers....

Haha, totally agree with the latter comment, though! :)

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brianb

brianb

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Processing and storage was at a premium so people wrote compact code in machine language.

Look, the first machine I worked on had 8 kilobytes of memory and a 4.25 microsecond cycle time (that's 0.235 megahertz for those that think that way). The backing storage was 14" exchangeable hard disk packs with a capacity of one megabyte. Surprisingly enough, it even had efficient working compilers, for Fortran-IV and PL/1 - but to get any real performance from it, you had to write assembler. And starting it up from cold was fun, you had to enter half a dozen instructions, in binary machine code, using front panel switches....

Later on, when I was working on mainframes in a university setting, I was instructed, very firmly, that, if it wouldn't run in 16K, it wasn't worth writing.... this was some years post-Apollo, the first Commodore PETs, Tandy TRS-80 & Apple II systems were just appearing on the market ... with a following wind, you could do a double precision multiply in about a tenth of a second ; current PCs are about a billion times as fast ...

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Athena

Athena

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NASA should use Linux :)

Way to go Amanda. Linux is the best!

Lots of space probes have actually run a highly customized Linux kernel built by VxWorks. Being a computer specialist my preference is FreeBSD which is the underlying kernel in Mac computers.

In any case coding in those days was an art, not like now where systems are bloated and highly inefficient :headbang:

Nikki

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StarMan1701

StarMan1701

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When I got my first 'proper' job I used a Tandy TRS-80 Model II. It was equipped with twin 8-inch floppy drives and was connected to the largest, noisiest daisywheel printer I have ever seen.

My first 'personal' computer was a Spectrum+ (I have about 7 Spectrums of various kinds now - I collect old 8-bit micros :)).

Ahh, those were indeed the days...

Lee.

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