HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Scott Manley to the rescue: "The Computer Hack That Saved Apollo 14" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSSmNUl9Snw

⬐ sizzzzlerz

Don Eyles, the programmer who devised the guidance computer patch, published a book, Sunburst and Luminary, earlier this year that provides more details on his work as a programmer for the Apollo computer while at MIT. It focuses primarily on Apollo 11 and the 1201/1202 errors it encountered during descent. He discussed the Apollo 14 fix in a 1971 article in Rolling Stone magazine.

⬐ thestoicattack

Here's that Rolling Stone article: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/don-eyle...

⬐ Hextinium

This is basically an article that says go watch a video by Scott Manly who is a very good communicator about space topics. He has lots of videos about various Apollo era topics and recent events that are particularly convoluted when they came out. Great resource highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/user/szyzyg

⬐ rbjorklin

His Kerbal Space Profram videos are really good and informative! Highly recommended!

⬐ rtkwe

I'm sad he's stopped doing his long form KSP series a la insterstellar and only seems to post unedited livestreams of KSP these days and space news stories.

⬐ None

None

⬐ Already__Taken

That's funny I skipped past this because I recognized the title and thought I'd seen scotts video it'll be better than whatever that post was. Looks like mods changed the link.

He's got a great angle of pushing KSP to breaking point with his background interest in rocket science, as opposed to simply playing a lot of KSP. A shining example of what teaching with games can look like.

"Things KSP doesn't teach" was a good series if anyone likes the idea but really doesn't want to put up with watching KSP.

⬐ mhandley

If you're interested in this, I can recommend Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir, by Don Eyles. http://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html

It was Don who wrote the Apollo lunar module software that handled the whole landing phase, and was responsible for the hack that saved the Apollo 14 mission. The book details the whole history of the LEM software development. I particularly like the part relating to the details behind the 1201 and 1202 program alarms on Apollo 11. I hadn't realized that they actually signified the LEM computer doing a full software reboot. Not what you really want to see on a fly-by-wire spacecraft during the landing phase. This turned out to be OK because the critical tasks were restartable, as they anticipated a power glitch and really didn't want to crater if one happened at a critical momemnt.

I've been watching a lot of Scott Manley on youtube play through kerbal space program. In the past two weeks I've learned more about rocket science than I would of ever expected. Scott's extremely well informed on the topic and entertaining as well.

In one video he even took a deep dive on how apollo 14 had to reprogram a computer mid-flight due to a faulty "abort" button that would be a problem on re-entry if it triggered. Neat seeing the underlying code and interface. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSSmNUl9Snw

But anyway it's things like these, where they'll stick a total of 83 rockets & motors to get something done, or the crazyness they did to land the rover, that really speaks to the separation of science and engineering.