The Apollo AGC Restoration Project

Graham1973

Graham1973

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A video series covering the effort to restore a surviving Apollo LEM AGC (Believed to be the one used in the LTA-8 prototype LEM) in time for it to be used to simulate the Apollo 11 landing on the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing. Episode 15 is of especial note as it features a piece of true digital archaeology where the partially functional AGC is used to copy an early developmental version of the LEM software that only survived in compiled form so that it can be restored to source code.

This link goes to the website covering the project including what is known about the recovered version of the 'Retread 50' prototype LEM software...

AGC Restoration Page

Here are the first five videos covering the project to date.





 
Here are the next five including that brilliant piece of digital archaeology...





 
Great thread, but should this be over in Avionics?
 
Now testing the additional equipment needed to make sure the AGC think's it's in an LM


All (simulated) systems are Go!

 
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A simulated moonlanding with cameo by the Orbiter Space Flight simulator supported by Project Apollo NASSP (Not sure if Rev 7 or Rev 8 though.)...

 
I find it severely disconcerting that at least in certain circles today the absolutely *monumental* accomplishment of reaching the Moon by Humans seems to be merely reduced to dancing electrons like in a video game - never mind the required advances in structures, rocket propulsion, life support, etc.
 
Not to mention the millions spent making a pen that works in zero g, unlike the Russians who used a pencil.
 
Foo Fighter said:
Not to mention the millions spent making a pen that works in zero g, unlike the Russians who used a pencil.
Click to expand...

The US Govement didn't spend a cent on developing the 'space pen', a private company did...

The “space pen” that has since become famous through its use by astronauts was developed independently by Paul C. Fisher of the Fisher Pen Co., who spent his own money on the project and, once he perfected his AG-7 “Anti-Gravity” Space Pen, offered it to NASA. After that agency tested and approved the pen’s suitability for use in space flights, they purchased a number of the instruments from Fisher for a modest price.
Click to expand...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-write-stuff/
 
mentalfloss.com

The Russians Didn't Just Use Pencils in Space

A longstanding urban legend goes like this: During the space race of the 1960s, NASA spent millions developing a fancy "space pen" that could be used in zero gravity ... but the Soviets just used a pencil. This story resonates with us because NASA did actually spend piles of money on writing...
mentalfloss.com mentalfloss.com
Why Not Use a Pencil?
Americans and Soviets actually did use pencils in space, before the Space Pen came around. Americans favored mechanical pencils, which produced a fine line but presented hazards when the pencil lead tips broke (and if you've ever used a mechanical pencil, you know that this happens a lot). That bit of graphite floating around the space capsule could get into someone's eye, or even find its way into machinery or electronics, causing an electrical short or other problems. And if there's one thing Houston didn't need, it was more astronauts calling up with problems.

The Soviet space program used grease pencils, which don't have breakage problems—to access more of the writing wax, cosmonauts simply peeled away another layer of paper. The problem with a grease pencil is that it's imprecise and smudgy—it's a lot like writing with a crayon. The peeled-away paper also created waste, and bits of paper floating around a Soyuz capsule were nearly as annoying as bits of graphite floating around an Apollo capsule.

The final mark against pencils has to do with fire. Any flammable material in a high-oxygen environment is a hazard, as we all learned after the terrible fire on Apollo 1. After that tragedy, NASA sought to minimize the use of flammable materials in space capsules—and every form of pencil (traditional, mechanical, or grease) involved some amount of flammable material, even if it was just the graphite.
Click to expand...
fisher-space-pen.jpg
 
Graham1973 said:
Foo Fighter said:
Not to mention the millions spent making a pen that works in zero g, unlike the Russians who used a pencil.
Click to expand...

The US Govement didn't spend a cent on developing the 'space pen', a private company did...

The “space pen” that has since become famous through its use by astronauts was developed independently by Paul C. Fisher of the Fisher Pen Co., who spent his own money on the project and, once he perfected his AG-7 “Anti-Gravity” Space Pen, offered it to NASA. After that agency tested and approved the pen’s suitability for use in space flights, they purchased a number of the instruments from Fisher for a modest price.
Click to expand...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-write-stuff/
Click to expand...
Where did I say the US government developed the "Space pen"? Come on, read what you quote properly.
 
Taking the restored AGC on tour.


And they've apparently recovered some more AGC software that only survives in compiled form...
 
The size of the features on each chip is much larger than in today's chips.
This means
- it takes a lot more energy to change the state of a bit, and
- a collision that changes one of the atoms in a transistor (transmutation) takes out only a tiny part of the transistor, instead of 1/10 the width of one.
The rope core memory was pretty much impervious to radiation as well.
 
Starship, like Falcon 9 probably uses modern computers, set up with lots of redundancy and a voting system.
 
publiusr said:
MEMs and miniaturization maybe allowing a rope memory come-back?
Click to expand...
Huh? Think. Just think first. AGC was 74k. Rope memory is hand made. We have mass produced terabyte micro SD cards.
Not 100 or 1000 times more memory but 13 million times more memory.
 

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