14 ms·
Apollo 11 Guidance Computer source code for the command and lunar modules
- davidw 7y agoWow, was "burn baby burn" really part of the original source code?! https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/blob/master/Luminary099/BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE.agc https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/blob/master/Luminar...
- floatingatoll 7y agoLine 34: > At the get-together of the AGC developers celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first moonwalk, Don Eyles (one of the authors of this routine along with Peter Adler) has related to us a little interesting history behind the naming of the routine.
- davidw 7y agoIt's kind of frustrating to try and figure out what is actually the original, unaltered code, and what's been added. There is a BURNBABY routine, though, so I guess that's real.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- thewonderidiot 7y agoWherever we added modern comments, they are denoted by a double hashtag (##) at the beginning of the line. Everything else, minus formatting concerns, is directly from the original listing. You can see the scans we transcribed this from here: https://archive.org/details/Comanche55J2k60 https://archive.org/details/Comanche55J2k60 https://archive.org/details/Luminary99001J2k60 https://archive.org/details/Luminary99001J2k60
- ASalazarMX 7y agoThe whole line is not as shocking # BURN, BABY, BURN -- MASTER IGNITION ROUTINE
- davidw 7y agoIt makes sense in context, of course, I just didn't think of NASA in the late 60ies as the sort of place where you could write 'clever' things like that.
- ASalazarMX 7y agoBack when AS/400s were AS/400s, I made a little tool to help the operators run a long process at night. I felt playful and left an easter egg: on Fridays the 13th, it would work as usual, but display a skull and bones with blinking red eyes while doing it. It seems that Fridays the 13th are rarer than I estimated, because months later my boss woke me up at midnight because the operators had woken her up because it was the first time the egg was triggered. In hindsight, it was a foolish thing to add since this was a bank. Fortunately they took it with good humor, and even kept the easter egg to scare new people. I suppose NASA is more formal than a bank, so they only let you fool around with the comments.
- bensochar 7y ago>TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/blob/master/Luminary099/LUNAR_LANDING_GUIDANCE_EQUATIONS.agc#L179 https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/blob/master/Luminar... ...it was not temporary
- ryanmarsh 7y ago>NUMERO MYSTERIOSO https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/blob/master/Luminary099/LUNAR_LANDING_GUIDANCE_EQUATIONS.agc#L666 https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/blob/master/Luminar...
- thewonderidiot 7y agoPeople frequently seem to think this is about the line number it's on (666), but that doesn't have anything to do with it. That line number is a totally modern construction; the original source code was on punch cards. That particular comment was punched onto card number 0562 in the LUNAR LANDING GUIDANCE EQUATIONS log section. The original developers only referred to code by punch card number, and page number in the listing. So it really is just a coincidence, and the "NUMERO MYSTERIOSO" is referring to whatever is in GAINBRAK,1.
- ryanmarsh 7y agoOne heck of a coincidence.
- wopian 7y agoIt should be 1. "GAINBRAK,1" is assigning 1 to GAINBRAK.
- thewonderidiot 7y agoNo, it's not. The 1 here is using interpretive index register X1 to index onto GAINBRAK. The star on the DMP means that multiplication is indexed. GAINBRAK is one of the pad-loaded descent targeting parameters; the index selects the appropriate number based on the phase of the descent.
- turbostyler 7y agoDidn’t this get released a couple years ago? Or was that a different ship?
- owlninja 7y agoHere is a HN post from 2016, although maybe more got added recently? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12048945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12048945
- thewonderidiot 7y agoThese files were originally put on GitHub in the VirtualAGC repository [1] in 2015. The code was publicly released and digitized into these source files in 2009, through cooperation with the MIT Museum. [1] https://github.com/virtualagc/virtualagc https://github.com/virtualagc/virtualagc
- 333c 7y agoI have the same question, and in addition I'm confused why this repository seems to have been created by some random GitHub user.
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoTitle is incorrect, this has been available for quite a while
- elliotec 7y agoBut it's still available "now" so I don't think it's that inaccurate.
- osamagirl69 7y agoI would argue that It should have (2016) appended to it to match the HN style, but it is otherwise accurate.
- rahuldottech 7y agoMy bad, didn't realize that it's been out for a while.
- ForHackernews 7y agoAlso, if you want to get really really technical, it's _always_ been in the public domain because it's a work by the US federal government and thus ineligible for copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t...
- dang 7y agoWe've fixed the title. Submitters: please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. This is in the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. (Submitted title was "Entire Apollo 11 Guidance Computer Source Code is now in the public domain")
- andrewclunn 7y agoJust be wary, they introduced a serious bug in v13
- jagged-chisel 7y agoHasn’t it always been “public domain” but only now published on GitHub?
- rahuldottech 7y agoAll NASA images and videos are in the public domain, but the same is not true for any technologies that they develop.
- dang 7y agoDiscussed in 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715395 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3888638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3888638 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8063192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8063192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522539 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12048945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12048945 Smaller threads from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19014278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19014278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18737380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18737380