An upset tummy and a sphincter-loosening blackout: Lunar spaceflight is all glamour Fifty years ago today, Apollo 8 carried the first humans into orbit around the Moon, ushering in a short-lived period of crewed lunar exploration. The crew, consisting of veteran astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, and rookie ‘naut William Anders (making what would become his only jaunt into space) had launched at 12:51 …
I have it on excellent authority (I read it on the internet) that we never made it to the moon. It was all done on a secret stage in a Hollywood warehouse. It was all done with toy props, post-shoot film trickery, & advice from our Alien Overlords.
The moon is really the secret base for our Overlords to keep tabs on us, their favorite source of "Reality TV" entertainment. They're taking bets on what idiocy we'll get up to next. The wise bets are on inventing a cure for intelligence & marketing it as a form of deoderant.
I disagree. I think we'll accidently fling a satelite into lunar orbit & snap pics of their base thus earning their wrath & triggering a reaction of epicly horrible proportions. That's right. They'll send down a JarJar Binks clone to run for World Leader. Mark my words.
I'm gonna go now, I'm gonna read more True News (conspiracy theories) on Reddit!
So I found this on the Interwebz, so it must be true!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJppeRWSD94
Some chaps building their own hybrid rocket and launching it. Objective was to hit 50,000+ feet. Note that to do that, they had to seek government permission. And if you skip to the end, you'll see the results.
Note that the parachute 'failed to deploy'. Note that the top sections of the recovered rocket were forced backwards. Obviously this was due to the rocket impacting on the ceiling. The suggestion that it was due to impact with the ground is simply the standad official coverup used in such cases, as at first pass, it's entirely plausible.. But then so is the nosecone containing the parachute impacting a barrier causing the failure to deploy.
They're both very much correct: we do need to expand off the planet, but Mars is still stupid. It has no magnetic shield and an unbreathably thin atmosphere; it'd face all the problems of a moon colony, but be months or even years away from resupply and in a deeper gravity well. There's no reason to settle there except overeager romanticism.
Sensible chap. Discovering cut corners (faux Apple!) or things that had been missed mid-flight, or on your way down to lithobrake in the Martian surface would not make for a good trip. At least the Moon would be a bit closer for potential rescue missions.
I still think we should be aiming at colonisation rather than just a brief excursion, so sending enough supples and construction material to make a mostly self-sustaining colony. But of course that's a wicked problem, expensive, and would leave colonists vulnerable to budget cuts. But then technology's moved on a lot in 50 years, and unmanned probes & vehicles are busily expanding our knowledge. So landing a human could become essentially a PR stunt, then 'been there, done that!' and nothing happens for another 50 years.
And I also found this-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovD0aLdRUs0
About the Rocketdyne F1 engines that powered Saturn 5. Two things struck me. One being the comment that original engines were assembled by highly skilled engineers, and we don't have those skills any more. I rather hope that isn't true, especially with people working on current space programmes. The other was the simplicity of the design, especially given NASA's redesign got it down to around 40 parts. Seems like that could make for a more afffordable design, which would be pretty crucial for sustainable ferry flights.
"One being the comment that original engines were assembled by highly skilled engineers"
Being the kind who turn things on lathes and do precision welding type engineering
"and we don't have those skills any more"
We do, but they're not in as much demand because you know, greater precision in manufacturing means they're not needed so much.
One of the bigger problems is the loss of trade knowledge that came about because the use of them was a "trade secret" and explicitly NOT written down, so when the number of apprentices went to near zero, the skills simply weren't passed on and noone thought to write anything down.
NASA had to scramble around retirement homes in the 1970s to find metallurgists who knew how to make the seamless tubing needed for SSME cooling nozzles - something that was routine in the 1950s - and resorted to cutting gun barrels off the ghost fleet to get some of the alloys needed for SSME internals..
Sad that a bunch of narrow minded idiots could tarnish that. The term "infamous" is just plain wrong. And "famous" barely does it justice.
I'm an atheist. a physicist and engineer.
I think the combination of those majestic words and the majestic setting was a high point in human history, no matter what you believe.
@Keith Oborn
I know that most of us in the Western world have an emotional and cultural vibration when Christian scripture is intoned, because it's everywhere around us and the English of the King James Version really is majestic, but it would be nice not to make the Bible the go-to source in exalted moments, as we have so many other choices.
When I was in college I met my first atheist. Interesting and open discussion. I was blessed in that he gave me this wisdom so early in my life that has guided me the rest of my life:
"If you do not believe in God, then you are an atheist. But if you attack people that do believe in God, then you are also a bigot."
@BillG "But if you attack people that do believe in God, then you are also a bigot."
Calling BS on that. have you read the Old Testament? It's full of the followers of YHWH smiting people. Believers in God are worse than bigots, they're all out murderers. Someone saying something like that is asking for special privilege, all opinions and views can be challenged, nobody gets a pass.
I see I got a downvote, some snowflake doesn't like the truth. Meanwhile, for clarity, I wasn't just talking about the followers of YHWH in a historical context either:
"state Rep. Matt Shea ... who’s vying for a sixth term in the state House, has been under fire since he acknowledged last week he had distributed a four-page document titled “Biblical Basis for War.” The document condemns abortion and same-sex marriage and describes how a “Holy Army” should punish those who flout “biblical law.” At one point, the document states: “If they do not yield – kill all males.”
(http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/nov/01/att-washington-realtors-seek-shea-campaign-refunds/)
That's an opinion from 2018 folks.
"If you do not believe in God, then you are an atheist. But if you attack people that do believe in God, then you are also a bigot."
I see a lot more attacking of those who don't believe in a god - or worse still, don't believe in _your_ god.
There are 5000 religions in the world, but don't worry, only YOURS is the right one.
New born babies, whatever their "theist" beliefs, rarely have an intelligent conversation with college students. So your point is rather inaccurate. Maybe the OP lead a very sheltered life and didn't go out much beyond the monastery walls prior to going to college? ;-)
I think that's a hard problem to solve. I'd like to get away from the default-christian thing, but I think you can't get away from the english that some people wrote in that period being just amazingly evocative. And there's little enough of it that you end up cycling around the usual suspects: KJV, Shakespeare &c.
Was there any contemporary backlash because of the Genesis reading, or is the use of the word "infamous" an example of modern and trendy outrage-at-everything-ism?
A quick internet search retrieves on single case of one single person who launched a (failed) lawsuit because of it... so, any ideas?
I suspect that these are different times than back then. What was acceptable and even revered is now in the trash bin. I'm more of an agnostic but those words being read back then did and still do send a shiver up my spine if nothing else than for the language of the KJV. There was a certain awe to the tone of their voices as they read it. Who wouldn't be awed at what they were seeing and where they were?
I am not a southern baptist but I grew up a lot of them. If your house where to burn down or get flooded out they would be the first people to help you. If you need medical care and don't have money they will help you because that is their ministry. Your are the bigot here.
I am not a southern baptist but I grew up a lot of them. If your house where to burn down or get flooded out they would be the first people to help you. If you need medical care and don't have money they will help you because that is their ministry. Your are the bigot here.
What about schooling?
Ah yes, the southern baptists: good people, all of them. The same southern baptists who only exist at all because they didn't want a little thing like owning slaves getting in the way of their religion: I mean, really, why should keeping black people as slaves prevent you being a minister, really, there's nothing unchristian about that, is there? They're only black people, after all, not really humans.
Fuck them all.
Outrage for outrage sake sometimes. I've no interest in taking up a religion myself, others seem to enjoy it so good luck to them. However I find the bible is a nice collection of moral stories ( I grew up reading David Kossof bible stories ) and as such the christian bible stories are still part of our Western literary culture. I'd hate to be so narrow minded I couldn't consider any form of literature and simply dismiss it out of hand. Yes, the bible was written to basically be a tool for indoctrination but in the modern age, an enlightened age, I can now appreciate the bible as a nice book of fun stories, even the ones in Revelations that must have been written by a skag smoking junkie! As an ardent fan of extreme heavy metal ( death, black, grind, etc ) the bible has provided some great source material for the bands I like! Ha ha!
"Sad that a bunch of narrow minded idiots could tarnish that."
So, at the demonstration of the pinnacle of science, and engineering, a flawed creation myth was read out,....
The people that called that out weren't 'idiots', I presume they were just peeved taxpayers who saw it as an erosion of the constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. you know, those 'idiots' that want everyone to abide the by the rules.
"Sad that a bunch of narrow minded idiots could tarnish that."
It certainly wasn't approved and had NASA known ahead of time what was planned they would have outright forbidden it being read. They (unlike Borman and co) were fully aware of the ramifications of reading a religious text of _any_ kind from space, given the plethora of non-abrahamic ones in the USA alone - and with the eyes of the world on them they were even more touchy about such things.
Lovell, Anders and Borman were extremely lucky not to have found themselves drummed out of NASA the day after their landing - and the reason they weren't has a lot to do with the fact that the Cold War was "God's America" against "Godless Communists" (Something that's been continued long after the Cold War ended and those pesky ruskies turned out to be mostly Orthodox christians after all).
Some religious writings are great literature - and so can be appropriate in some circumstances even if they're not from your religion.
So, in my (atheist) opinion, that Genesis reading was very appropriate for the situation - and very powerful.
To give a different example: the well-known example after the Trinity nuclear test:
Oppenheimer:
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."
[Wikipedia's words - but I read that in various places long before Wikipedia existed]
No, the aspiration of the US is not to build a wall. That is the aspiration of our current and temporary Idiot in Chief, and a very few of his most ignorant loudmouthed xenophobic supporters. The vast majority of us would rather see the money spent on something useful, like education. Or pothole repair.
The point of building the wall is protect Americans from Crime. People who destroy the small town hospitals but coming over sick and expecting the Americans to take care of them without having to pay for it. Oh yea lest not forget taking American jobs and driving people out their home via increase in property taxes to teach people who are unwilling to learn english. I hate bigots. But I really hate ignorant bigots like yourself who aren't willing to see what damage these "migrants" have done to the average American.
I can't retire because of Jerks like you. My property taxes have gone up 10% every to teach kids who only want to take from Americans. They don't want to add any thing to this country. There are over 200 languages in this country but I am expected to learn Spanish because jerks like you really don't understand how racist these people are.Or that matter how racist you are.
> If you are an American, your heritage is either Native American, slave, refugee or immigrant. That's it.
So? I am a *LEGAL* immigrant to the US and agree 100% with the very unpopular post above. Based of many decades of actually living in the US and having to live daily with the huge downside of massive *illegal* immigration.
None of the illegals would qualify for LEGAL immigration. Anywhere. Not in Canada, Not in Australia, Not in the UK. The Central American illegals are deported by Mexico at their southern border after beatings and abuse by the federales and the military if they try to stay in Mexico. The illegals are mostly illiterate peasants who form a huge pool of easily exploitable labour. Not just in agricultural but in domestic service. The well to do overwhelming Democratic voters of California would not have their cheap nannys, cleaners and gardeners if it was not for this never ending flow of cheap labour from the south. The illegals are perfect domestic servants. Totally guilt free. But unlike South Africa, where the whites have the same kind of set up, the American equivalent does not give a damn about their illegal servants or their family. I have yet to hear of a case of any of these Gentry Democrats sponsoring the education of their servants children education, for example, which is the norm in South Africa.
About 20% of my state tax goes to finance the education of illegals children. Who have the worst educational attainment rate. And to pay for the health care and welfare payments of illegals. Who have by far the highest welfare dependency rate of any group in the state. Disagree. Then actually look up the numbers. The real ones. Not the ones put out by politically motivated organizations.
Other stuff. About 25% of my car insurance is to pay for uninsured motorists coverage. Almost all illegals. About 25% of car accident in the LA area are caused by uninsured illegals. My son had to go through six months of very painful treatment because he had been exposed to someone with TB. Only one local group in California has high rates of TB. Illegals.
I could go on. Those who actually live in the parts of the US with large numbers of illegals will know exactly what I am talking about. And will have stories of their own.
You can like these people as individuals, most are exceptionally nice people in person, but that still does not change the fact that they should not be here. They should apply their hard work ethic back in their own country. For whose ruling elites, their emigration is very convenient on several levels.
Build the wall. Now. Which is exactly the Wall the Democrats in Congress have agreed to on several occasions over the last 30 years. Since the 1986 amnesty.
" [...] like you really don't understand how racist these people are."
Humans are basically a tribal animal. It is always sad to see when oppressed people are given power - and then they often implement the same intolerant policies as their oppressors had.
It takes time, education, and many good examples to try to mould a society to a liberal tolerant culture.
An expression in the UK in the 1970s to justify boycotting general elections was: "whoever you vote for - the Government always gets in". Successive Westminster Home Secretaries in several decades have reinforced that view.
The 1978 film "Power Play" illustrates the point. After a successful military coup to overthrow an oppressive dictator - one of the rebels immediately installs himself as the new dictator. The liberal leader of the revolution ends up sharing the same summary firing squad as the old dictator.
" It is always sad to see when oppressed people are given power - and then they often implement the same intolerant policies as their oppressors had."
This is one of the reasons why the first thing you need to do after a revolution that's overthrown a nasty government, is _kill_ all the revolutionaries who attempt to govern. If you don't they will form an even nastier government.
"You probably actually can't retire because of 2008"
I worked out that I wouldn't be able to retire in 1984. I was 17 and did the math on birthrates in the developed world, the developing world, china, etc and looked at how government pensions were funded - having realised that there wouldn't be enough working taxpayers to fund pensioners, I realised that if I was _very_ lucky I might be able to draw a state pension at age 75 but it was more likely to be 78 and it would be means tested - and it pretty much didn't matter WHICH country I was in.
GenXers have been screwed for a long time. Millenials doubly so.
"The vast majority of us would rather see the money spent on something useful, like education. Or pothole repair."
Unfortunately, the idiot in chief is following a policy which was set in motion by those who ignored the warnings of a certain gentleman who cautioned about 55 years ago against letting the military-industrial system take control of the economy.
At some point the tail is going to wag the dog so hard that they'll part company or the dog will be knocked out. It's beginning to look like the latter, rather than the former.
"From a time When America Got Shit Done(TM)."
Very much on a "a wing and a prayer" - the walls of the LEM were tissue-paper thin and when Russians examined examples after the end of the cold war they were quite shocked at the risks taken to be "first"
Risk-aversion in missions was something they'd developed well before the americans, despite the many spectacular and fatal accidents which are mostly atrributable to poor funding and extreme political pressure of the kind where one might end up dead anyway.
and the phantom threat of the Soviet Union flinging a crew at the Moon first.
A Phantom Threat? Oh please, ........ surely not as Phantom Treats on CyberIntelAIgent Man0euvres.
Welcome to Live Operational Virtual Environments in Heavenly Prisons where Daemon Angels are Deployed to AIMentor and Monitor Future Progress in NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT Programs for the Bigger Picture Show. ...... New Creations BroadBandCasting Augmented Virtual Reality Programs for Media to Realise with Presentation in Fundamentally Disturbing Global News Reaction.
:-) cc. ....... Integrity Initiative type Operations re New Cyber Space Initiatives ....... with Augmented Virtual Reality Command and Control Leverage with Heavenly Prisons. And that is most definitely an Embarrassment of Riches to Server.
Merry Xmas, El Regers. It has been a great year here and I thank one and all for their shared thoughts. You can all see above what we have done thus far with what is known and shared with us.
I'd say that is pretty impressive and you all deserve high praise indeed. Bravo. Encore ........ for More Presentations from Augmented Virtual Reality Programs.
Hmmmm? .... Are SMARTR IntelAIgent Machine Systems Overhauling and Improving SCADA Operating Systems with Novel Source Input/Output viewed as Almighty Disturbance or Xmas Miracle? Only the One delivers All the Candy. Choose the One is a No-Brainer.
Earth to amfM! We're discussing the Apollo program as it was back in the 1960s. We were afraid of very different Reds Under Our Beds back then.
And yes, the Soviets landing a man on the moon was a phantom threat. It wasn't going to happen, now way, no how, fageddaboudit. But they took great pains to make us think otherwise ... Disinformation is something they've been doing well since long before Putin was accepted into the KGB.
Whatever. Solstice was a couple days ago, the days are getting longer now. Almost time to start seedlings for spring planting ... and so the cycle continues, despite all the politicians worldwide doing their damnedest to fuck it up for the rest of us. Beers all around! :-)
No. There isn't any military strength stuff... they just had basic over-the-counter Dramamine. Even after all the Shuttle research, there isn't really good anti-nausea medication that works on most people.
I did hear that Borman held his logs in the whole flight, as he really didn't want to use the onboard toilet "facilities" - if you've ever met Frank Borman, you'd see he's a guy that could say "I'm not going to shit for 5 days" and mean it.
Space sickness (aka space adaptation syndrome) was not really understood as a major problem until the Shuttle.
The astronauts (and fighter pilots) consider medics to be the enemy, since they have the power to instantly ground them, so there's an institutional prejudice against talking to doctors. Being astronauts, they hid being sick really well. Just how well was not appreciated for decades.
Rusty Schweickart was the first astronaut to openly mention space sickness during his stand-up EVA on Apollo 9 and it seriously harmed his career. It was seen as "how come he's the only one getting sick? whatta pussy!" when it was actually a case of "he's the only one to open his mouth"
Need to take it twenty minutes or an hour before symptoms set in (depending on how much you are digesting at the moment ... takes longer after a meal).
As I said, I've never seen it fail, but I'm just a testimonial. As are you. Try it again?
On the gripping hand, I've never suggested someone prone to sea-sickness venture out in a force 8[0] ... Contrary to popular belief, I'm not prone to torturing lubbers.
[0] Beaufort? Really? Haven't you lot gone with teh metrics?
I've heard a lot of things attributed to ginger, but as a motion sickness remedy? Naw.
I was in the Navy on a sub for ~4 years, and my first underway was in state 5 seas (for sea trials after shipyard, meaning we were on the surface for quite some time) taking 30 degree rolls for hours on end (and those 'TDU weights' baked by the cooks at breakfast sat in my stomach until they had to come back out the wrong end). After a while, nearly everyone [including seasoned veterans] were sick. You learn how to deal with it.
Motion sickness is more of a 'control' thing. You have to learn to calm your mind and "go with the flow" because you can NOT control the rolling motion. You can only control yourself. So that's what you focus on. And if you're sitting down, keep in mind that nobody gets seasick in a rocking chair, so if you can orient yourself to make the motion "kinda like that" it's a whole lot easier. Of course, that last part isn't what makes people sick in space, but there's probably something about it that's "equivalent" to something familiar... so you find 'that' and make it 'ok' again.
/me points out that submarines have round hulls, and as such, roll pretty violently when on or near the surface, which [fortunately] is NOT 'most of the time'.
"[...] so if you can orient yourself to make the motion [...]"
If it is pitch and yaw motion you have to match two directions.
IIRC motion sickness is caused by a disjunction between what the eye sees as the motion - and what the inner ear senses. When the two are giving different messages then nausea can set in. Advice for a boat trip is to be on deck - rather than in a cabin where the movement is sensed but the eye sees the room not moving.
It has been suggested that motion sickness is an evolutionary trait. Not for motion - but to counter eating alkaloid poison berries. The body's reaction can be disorientation of vision and position senses - and vomiting is a way to get rid of the poison..
> I've heard a lot of things attributed to ginger, but as a motion sickness remedy? Naw.
Well known for donkey's years. Medical research proving it as or more effective than scopalamine has been published for at least 30 years that I've personally seen.
.
> I was in the Navy on a sub for ~4 years, and my first underway was in state 5 seas (for sea trials after shipyard, meaning we were on the surface for quite some time) taking 30 degree rolls for hours on end [...]
> /me points out that submarines have round hulls, and as such, roll pretty violently when on or near the surface, which [fortunately] is NOT 'most of the time'.
Spare a thought for the poor b*stards in the WWII British corvettes. They routinely rolled 40 degrees. To be clear, a sweep of 80 degrees. And, stuck on the surface full-time (unless they got torpedoed), they endured it for days at a time, sometimes for the entire 2week+ convoy duty. The Atlantic can be savage: occasionally the armoured bridge etc would be dented by waves. Wait for the next convoy to assemble, rinse, and repeat. Start 1939, wait till war ends.
They didn't even have belts on their bunks... Lots of broken bones etc.
Another no for ginger here
I used to suffer from motion sickness in cars and nothing I was ever given cured it.
I'd even throw up in my sleep ....
Only thing that cured it was riding a cross channel ferry overnight through Biscay..... on a night when it was blowing between 9 and 11 ..... needless to say everyone was sick even the 20 yr crew veterans.
And we were locked inside because it was too dangerous to go on deck...... ewwwwww
Trip back was almost as bad, strangely I was fine and have been ever since..
<has a few more tales of the sea from his working for the navy days
I've seen (and experienced) flat cola work on airsick passengers (Cessna 208 on a really bad day). You really do need to ensure the carbonation's out, but a few minutes with the kind of shaking we had made sure of that.
Curiously I've _never_ been seasick. Only car/airsick and _only_ when having the stuffing shaken out of me in a small aircraft for a prolonged period for the latter.
On the other hand, once someone starts chucking in an enclosed cabin on a small boat, you can guarantee a chain reaction. Fouveux Strait ferry crossings were always fun and generally best to be outdoors on even if the waves were higher than the top deck.
Before The D Day landings it was found impossible to test anti-seasickness medication on troops as the test subjects believed the tabs were to make them sick. So many managed to spit out or not take tabs that the results were meaningless. I had this from one of the ruthless physiologists who anaesthetised medical students and dumped them in swimming pools with life jackets on to find the best design! He tried hard!
I read somewhere that taking a dump in an Apollo capsule involved the use of a carefully positioned plastic bag on the part of the dumpee. The remaining two crew got as far away as they could during the process. If you have seen one of these capsules you soon realise that 'as far away as you can' is a pretty meaningless concept in these circumstances.
Positioning was achieved with sticky tape and finger sheaths were provided to assist with "undocking".
Pragmatically speaking, assisting each other would make a lot more sense than backing up a couple of feet, since it would significantly reduce the chances of unintended "excursions". Any macho image preservation could have been done in post-production banter. Could not have been any worse than caring for an incontinent elder.
That's not true.
What IS true, though, that at one time NASA DID play with the idea to feed the astronauts a diet that would not necessitate a bowel movement for the whole trip of 14 days. They went so far as to do experiments (I do not know if any astronauts were involved). The unlucky record holder held out for about 10 days, and, ahem, re-ignition of the digestive tract was not very nice for the test person or the ones to take care of him.
Needless to say, or maybe it is, the test were deemed unsuccessful, and were NOT used on any space flight, much less on one of the moon flights.
You DO know how they handled a number 2 on Apollo, yes? Number 1 was simple – stick it in a tube, pee in a plastic bag, hook the bag up to a valve with connection to the outside, open the valve, observe constellation Urinus, close valve.
Number 2 was a bit trickier. It involved large plastic bags with a funnel opening. It had self-glue adhesive attached. They would glue the bag with these strips to their behind. When they were finished, they dropped some tablet in the whole thing (to prevent fermentation), use the adhesive to close the bag, put the bag in another bag that could be closed easily and securely (just for safety), knead the whole concoction so that the chemicals of the tablet would be nicely distributed, and stored the whole shebang for the whole rest of the trip. Also recall that there was no privacy whatsoever from your fellow crewmates. They had whole pre-packaged kits for that, with the two plastic bags, the tablets, and some wet towels.
Those guys are heroes, goddamnit!
I remember this quote quite well when I watched it on TV. Exciting times those days. Computers of the day were BIG things and memory (if you were lucky) was measured in kilobytes (or k-digits (with flags) if you had that computer).
We've come a LONG way since then (understatement of year!).
"Computers of the day were BIG things"
The first hand calculators were just being invented, and the first minicomputers. So yeah. But the design for Apollo's computer was from several years earlier, 1965-ish (and some documents I found go back even earlier).
ROM firmware on the Apollo computers used 'rope' memory, sorta like read-only core memory, where the presence of a core or absence of one determined 1 or 0. They were strung by women who were good at sewing, as I understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory
I also downloaded another document from a related Apollo archive that talked about the ICs chosen in that computer. Apparently it was a dual 3 input NOR gate, plus a memory sense amplifier. Yeah, JUST the two. These were primarily the only things available at design time in or around 1965 in sufficient quantities to be practical. Another photograph at the archive site showed the Fairchild 'F' clearly visible, but the intent was that many manufacturers could compete for producing these things for the Apollo program. And I'm not surprised it if was RTL... one of the 'first and worst' designs for logic ICs. But yeah, it worked. And it was small/light enough to fit in an Apollo capsule [and the LEM had its own as well]. The gate circuit diagram in the document shows 3 transistors and 4 resistors... wheeee!!!! Not sure what the logic gate 'fanout' of a collector resistor would allow you to have, but it probably wasn't much.
The sense amplifier was a bit more complex, consisting of 6 transistors and 8 resistors, with 3 external ref voltages, and an external balanced input transformer with 2 external resistors, and also used a strobe pulse to enable the open collector output. Most likely it was configured as one amp per bit per core board.
I got that particular PDF document from "https://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/groups/apollo/bibliography/q-and-a.tcl_topic_id=11&topic=Document%20Library.html" (I would put a link but I don't wanna deal with captcha).
The actual PDF was titled 'A case history of the AGC integrated logic circuits'.
Several other diagrams show discrete components being used as interfaces and signal shapers. Additionally it shows how 'unpowered' gates could be combined with a single gate (that has power applied) to increase the number of inputs on the gate. If you look at the circuit diagram of the RTL logic it makes sense, basically "leave off" the power connection and you can combine two by tying the outputs together.
The full schematic is probably in there someplace. I'd like to see it as a logic diagram, but that's a lot of downloading and searching... and I think someone already has a simulator out there someplace.
"They were strung by women who were good at sewing, as I understand."
Second generation mainframe memories were like that - very pretty. The EELM KDF9 circa 1960 had some for a very small stack memory. It was housed in a module with clear perspex sides - that slotted into the standard modular racking.
One day someone inserted it in the wrong slot. Literally "dropped bits" as all the wires fused - and the cores fell to the bottom of the module.
The NOR thing (the block 1 AGCs used a single gate per package, the block 2 had 2 per package) is a nice thing: someone proved, quite a long time ago (19th century?) that either NOR or NAND are universal: you can create any boolean function out of just NOR or just NAND. And here is a machine which demonstrates that.
(I think the Cray-1 may also have only used NOR although I think it had some very fast RAM fir registers.)
I was 10 at the time. It was one of the most amazing feats of human engineering I had seen up til then. I have posters of Apollo 8's mission on the walls of my bedroom. My best friend at the time - whose name I have sadly forgotten - and I spent (wasted?) a fair amount of school time working out how we could make models of the command module, with consoles and seats, out of paper and glue!
The lawsuit was bough in 1971 by a woman who made a career, a very lucrative one, of filing nuisance lawsuits revolving around some "civil right" or other. In this case the separation of church and state. These people are always sociopaths / psychopaths who once they hit on some particular scam, their angle, will keep filing lawsuits no matter how trivial, pointless or without metrit purely to keep in the public limelight and keep the donations to the "cause" coming in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O%27Hair
In the end she was murdered by another conman who tried to get in on the scams but was blown off by her and her family so as revenge kindnapped them and tried to steal the rest of the money.
Its pretty much a given that all high publicity lawsuits like the ones she brought are part of a financial scam. One way or another. Usually as simple as keeping the donations flowing in to their origination that is fighting for the "cause". You can get comfortably rich with this kind of "activist" scam.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
