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How They Built the Software of Apollo 11
LinuxScribe tips a piece up at Linux.com with inside details on the design and construction of the Apollo 11 code. There are some analogies to open source development but they are slim. MIT drafted the code — to run on the Apollo Guidance Computer, a device with less grunt than an IBM XT — it had 2K of memory and a 1-MHz clock speed. It was an amazing machine for its time. NASA engineers tested, polished, simulated, and refined the code. "The software was programmed on IBM punch cards. They had 80-columns and were 'assembled' to instruction binary on mainframes... and it took hours. ... During the mission, most of the software code couldn't be changed because it was hard-coded into the hardware, like ROM today... But during pre-launch design simulations, problems that came up in the code could sometimes be finessed by... computer engineers using a small amount of erasable memory that was available for the programs. The software used a low-level assembly language and was controlled using pairs or segments of numbers entered into a square-shaped, numeric-only keyboard called a Display and Keyboard Unit... The two-digit codes stood for 'nouns' or 'verbs,' and were used to enter commands or data, such as spacecraft docking angles or time spans for operations." Reader Smark adds, "The Google Code Blog announced today that the Virtual AGC and AGS project has transcribed the Command Module and Lunar Excursion Module code used during the Apollo 11 moon landing. The code is viewable at the VirtualAGC Google Code Page."
This is an Apollo DSKY BTW. A Classic command would have been
[VERB]66[PRO]
Which loosely translated means give me manual control, I need to land this sucker. If you watch the descent movies you will hear "P66" being called out by the LMP a few minutes before landing. Interesting to note that the 6 is right beside PRO. I wonder if there is a bit of clever UI design in that.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This Apollo computer has specs almost identical to ancient 1970s home technologies like the Atari VCS/2600 game console (1 megahertz, 2K ROM). Or an Atari 400/Commodore VIC-20 computers (1 megahertz, ~8K RAM). That gives you a rough idea of how "weak" the computer inside Apollo truly was.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Just to be pedantic, it was actually the Commander (Armstrong) who actually flew the LM to the surface, not the misnomered LMP, who mainly monitored things and called out warnings and readings. So if anyone said P66 (which the transcript doesn't indicate literally happened), it was more likely the Commander, who would've entered the program. The transcript has Armstrong saying "I'm going to..." when he goes into P66.
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
They overshot the original intended landing point by about 4 miles because of a timing error--the descent burn started about four seconds late.
The rocks-and-boulders-and-crater thing you're thinking of was a different issue.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
The LM initially overshot because the crew were distracted by alarms caused by the computer being unable to process all its tasks simultaneously. These alarms, in turn, had been triggered because ground simulations hadn't taken account of hardware powering up in a random order which generated data from two radars instead of one, which overloaded the computer.
Armstrong's boulder avoidance flying was undertaken after the crew realised they'd overshot the target site by 4 seconds.
(Unfortunately I find this subject insanely fascinating)