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>casually The mission was rushed, politically motivated, and a failure. There was nothing casual about it. After the 60s the USSR space program was a mess of f

>casually The mission was rushed, politically motivated, and a failure. There was nothing casual about it. After the 60s the USSR space program was a mess of failures and catching up to NASA. >because astronauts lobbied against any and every automation for fear of being made redundant.) Well, when you don't live in an autocratic state, you actually get a say on what gets done especially when its your ass on the line. Perhaps fears were overplayed with the auto system dropping landing gear and killing everyone, but a simple compromise was reached: a cable (which every compatible STS shuttle had) would be plugged into the landing gear and then the computer for full automation. Frankly, I wouldn't trust 1970s era automation to land the spaceship I'm in. Considering the massive bodycount of the USSR space program (Soyuz 1, Nedelin catastrophe, Soyuz 11, etc) maybe erring on the side of caution made sense instead of risking life and limb on "firsties." US Astronauts were very aware of the early Soviet deaths and failures and wanted nothing of them. Cosmonauts on the other hand, had no choice but to obey their communist masters unless they wanted to spend the rest of their lives in a gulag. Komarov walked into Soyuz 1 knowing he would die, for example. Polyus project managers knew it wasn't going to work because top leadership rushed it and wanted to 'show up the Americans,' etc. Environments built on fear perform sub-optimally. edit: driveby downvoters, my comment is factually correct, please explain yourselves. edit2: cant post a new item right now so my reply to the parent below: The era I'm discussing was prior to the Challenger. The US casualty numbers was well below USSR numbers at the time (its a stupid comparison anyway considering how many more people the HUGE STS could hold). Those astronauts knew those numbers. They didn't want to take changes like the risky and deadly USSR approach. That's why we didn't automate the Shuttle. NASA had a lower tolerance for risk because it respected the lives of its astronauts. In an autocracy you just throw bodies at the problem until you get the desired results. >the Nedelin catastrophe, which was completely unrelated to the space program It was a rocket explosion at the Baikonur Cosmodrome using the same staff/crew/engineers as the space program. The USSR didn't separate their military and civilian space program, so yes, its perfectly appropriate to hold them accountable for their lax safety standards that killed over 100 people! Hell, the Soviets even buried it and tossed these poor people into a mass grave and told the West that Nedelin died in a plane crash! So yeah, they saw it as part of their space program and it shamed them enough to lie about it. In that era, NASA had First pilot-controlled space flight, first orbital solar observatory, first geosynchronous satellite, first satellite navigation system, first geostationary satellite, first Mars flyby, eight-day human spaceflight record, first orbital rendezvous, first 14-day human spaceflight record, first spacecraft docking, first orbital ultraviolet observatory, first humans on the Moon, first mobile rover driven by humans off earth, first spacecraft to orbit another planet: Mars, first human-made object sent on escape trajectory away from the Sun, first mission to enter the asteroid belt and leave inner solar system,84-day human-crewed space record (skylab 3), First Jupiter flyby, First planetary gravitational assist (Venus flyby), First Mercury flyby,etc. AND THAT'S JUST UP To 1974! Its clear that NASA was going for scientific and difficult technical achievement and the Soviets were going for propagandist achievements. By the mid 60's the USSR couldn't keep up with NASA's achievements and the USSR space program became a joke with putting guns into space after the US moon landing and of course, the US's STS which changed the game in regards to human spaceflight from a crew/mass perspective. The ISS wouldnt be possible without its lifting and cargo capabilities.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
> Frankly, I wouldn't trust 1970s era automation to land the spaceship I'm in. This comment led to me looking up a few details of the lunar landings on Wikipedia; pretty interesting stuff. Apparently the Apollo 14 trusted the computers and the engineers back on Earth enough to reprogram the things on the fly, although the radar system was still buggy - but I'm not sure if the latter counts as software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_14#Lunar_descent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_14#Lunar_descent
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Astronauts would have been aware of Apollo era automation problems. The most notable the Apollo 11 Rendezvous Radar Switch eating all available CPU and nearly aborting the mission. There's also a cultural problem here. Many of the early astronauts were test pilots, who came from a "I fly this" culture. Taking away their autonomy was difficult and every screw up that engineers made caused further rifts between the two. Engineers vs astronauts was a common narrative back then.
  - creshal 11y ago
    > The most notable the Apollo 11 Rendezvous Radar Switch eating all available CPU and nearly aborting the mission. Except that it wasn't. The Apollo Guidance Computer had full multitasking, and it was reporting that the rendezvous radar, which the crew had accidentally left on, was trying to eat up CPU and was denied it by the scheduler. The (correct) reaction was ignoring it and letting the scheduler continue booting the radar off the task list.
    - paulmd 11y ago
      Actually, leaving the rendezvous radar active was the checklisted procedure. Remember that in the event of an aborted landing they would be needing the rendezvous radar right away to try and find the CSM, so the idea was to have it powered up and locked on. The problem was that the computer that guided the radar antenna controlled the orientation by phase angle. Everything was running on 28V AC, but the computer and the radar mount were on separate AC feeds. The documentation specified that the supplies needed to be frequency-locked, but failed to specify the need for being phase-locked as well. So basically the two systems could be at any phase angle relative to each other. In this case, when they flipped the switch they were really out of phase and the computer was commanding traverses that were entirely out of range. The invalid angle caused the radar antenna to continuously issue interrupts. I'd imagine the system basically works like an open-loop system. That would mask the fault, since usually the radar would just lose some of its field-of-view around the edges but work fine in the center. Or that usually it would just cause the antenna to slew a bit off-target at first before the control loop guided it back, but this time it was so far out of range the antenna wouldn't even accept it. It's probably a good thing they didn't need to abort, because with such a fault I doubt the rendezvous radar would have functioned properly. Even if they knew about the design problem (I don't think they did?) they probably would have a hard time power-cycling it. There is no "off" setting for that switch, only SLEW (on) and AUTO (computer controlled). During an abort I would imagine that AUTO would have the computer keep the radar online, so they would have had to use the DSKY to have the computer turn it off and back on. Who knows what effect that might have on an active abort program. Source (good read): http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/no-a-checklist-error-did-not-almost-derail-the-first-moon-landing/2/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/no-a-checklist-error-... Yes, the executive was a great piece of engineering and definitely saved the mission. Margaret Hamilton was a great systems engineer, and NASA as a whole has a track record of rigorous software engineering practices. As a result, in the last 11 versions of the Shuttle's 420k-line software package they have had a total of 17 bugs. Another good read, "They Write The Right Stuff": http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff

pavel_lishin 11y ago

> Frankly, I wouldn't trust 1970s era automation to land the spaceship I'm in. This comment led to me looking up a few details of the lunar landings on Wikipedia; pretty interesting stuff. Apparently the Apollo 14 trusted the computers and the engineers back on Earth enough to reprogram the things on the fly, although the radar system was still buggy - but I'm not sure if the latter counts as software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_14#Lunar_descent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_14#Lunar_descent

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Astronauts would have been aware of Apollo era automation problems. The most notable the Apollo 11 Rendezvous Radar Switch eating all available CPU and nearly aborting the mission. There's also a cultural problem here. Many of the early astronauts were test pilots, who came from a "I fly this" culture. Taking away their autonomy was difficult and every screw up that engineers made caused further rifts between the two. Engineers vs astronauts was a common narrative back then.
- creshal 11y ago
  > The most notable the Apollo 11 Rendezvous Radar Switch eating all available CPU and nearly aborting the mission. Except that it wasn't. The Apollo Guidance Computer had full multitasking, and it was reporting that the rendezvous radar, which the crew had accidentally left on, was trying to eat up CPU and was denied it by the scheduler. The (correct) reaction was ignoring it and letting the scheduler continue booting the radar off the task list.
  - paulmd 11y ago
    Actually, leaving the rendezvous radar active was the checklisted procedure. Remember that in the event of an aborted landing they would be needing the rendezvous radar right away to try and find the CSM, so the idea was to have it powered up and locked on. The problem was that the computer that guided the radar antenna controlled the orientation by phase angle. Everything was running on 28V AC, but the computer and the radar mount were on separate AC feeds. The documentation specified that the supplies needed to be frequency-locked, but failed to specify the need for being phase-locked as well. So basically the two systems could be at any phase angle relative to each other. In this case, when they flipped the switch they were really out of phase and the computer was commanding traverses that were entirely out of range. The invalid angle caused the radar antenna to continuously issue interrupts. I'd imagine the system basically works like an open-loop system. That would mask the fault, since usually the radar would just lose some of its field-of-view around the edges but work fine in the center. Or that usually it would just cause the antenna to slew a bit off-target at first before the control loop guided it back, but this time it was so far out of range the antenna wouldn't even accept it. It's probably a good thing they didn't need to abort, because with such a fault I doubt the rendezvous radar would have functioned properly. Even if they knew about the design problem (I don't think they did?) they probably would have a hard time power-cycling it. There is no "off" setting for that switch, only SLEW (on) and AUTO (computer controlled). During an abort I would imagine that AUTO would have the computer keep the radar online, so they would have had to use the DSKY to have the computer turn it off and back on. Who knows what effect that might have on an active abort program. Source (good read): http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/no-a-checklist-error-did-not-almost-derail-the-first-moon-landing/2/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/no-a-checklist-error-... Yes, the executive was a great piece of engineering and definitely saved the mission. Margaret Hamilton was a great systems engineer, and NASA as a whole has a track record of rigorous software engineering practices. As a result, in the last 11 versions of the Shuttle's 420k-line software package they have had a total of 17 bugs. Another good read, "They Write The Right Stuff": http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff