4 ms·
I don’t think it’s a particularly accurate or fair simplification to say that overload during Apollo 11 was due to operator error. The rendezvous radar was int
by rrss 4y ago
I don’t think it’s a particularly accurate or fair simplification to say that overload during Apollo 11 was due to operator error.
The rendezvous radar was intended to be enabled during landing to be prepared for an abort. It only caused problems due to a hardware bug in the interface between the radar and the LGC which caused something similar to an interrupt storm. Grumman and MIT had both discovered this bug prior to Apollo 11 but decided not to fix it.
source: various publications by don eyles
- rrss 4y agoalso, the waypoint-based restart protection used in AGC software to handle power failures and the decision to reuse that mechanism for handling running out of core sets or VAC areas was due to charley muntz, not hal laning. But regardless I agree Laning deserves more recognition for his numerous contributions.
- ncmncm 4y agoAs I understood it, the checklist said the switch was to be off during landing, such that landing simulations with it on had not been attempted. Not sure if mission control knew it was on. Charlie Muntz was certainly deeply involved, as was Don, in ensuring and verifying that failures would be recoverable. I think Muntz coded the interpreter much of the landing was coded in; Laning, the priority-based executive monitor Charlie and Don coded to. I am always amazed how, given such a slow base machine, it was so conventional to run an interpreter and then write actual programs to the interpreter. Apparently the space needed for the interpreter was more than made up by the more-compact code used to drive it, and the slowdown was tolerable.