Monday, July 20, 2009

Apollo 11 mission's 40th Anniversary: One large step for open source code...



On this day 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon. This was quite an achievement for mankind and a key milestone in world history.

To commemorate this event the Command Module code (Comanche054) and Lunar Module code (Luminary099) have been transcribed from scanned images to run on yaAGC (an open source AGC emulator) by the Virtual AGC and AGS project.

For more information on this project, I recommend looking at the website and the open source project.

Here are a few links to the source code:
As the project evolves, look for syntax highlighting done with a special extension for google-code-prettify.

Image - NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

29 comments:

  1. First one to find a bug should get a prize.

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  2. Hm...thats interesting, they used an int instead of a double. Amazing how the lunar module landed intact...wait... that can't be right ;)

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  3. Wow, seriously. Looking at this puts what I do into perspective. Thanks for taking the time to get this piece of history out there!

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  4. yeah, that code seems to land in MGM studios rather than the moon, am I reading the code right.

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  5. @sssenator, if u have spent some time with PLC or PLC like eqiupment, u will know that they only have int math. Need some multiplication with 10/100/1000 before doing division if u want decimals. just my 2cent! :D

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  6. println("one small step for man") // todo - fix typo

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  7. Love the comments on lines 179/180 of LUNAR_LANDING_GUIDANCE_EQUATIONS. Wouldn't wanted to have read that if I'd been Armstrong or Aldrin :)

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  8. "NUMERO MYSTERIOSO" on line 666 of the LL Guidance Equations, too.

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  9. The author of some of this code, Don Eyles, has a great article about two life-threatning bugs. Can't post the URL, search for "TALES FROM THE LUNAR MODULE GUIDANCE COMPUTER"

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  10. line 257: XCH TEMPBETA # OVFL NOT EXPECTED.

    lol 'tis cute :)

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  11. Does the source code mention anything about Nazi science or the slave labor from Buchenwald that Wernher von Braun used during his development of rocket technology?

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  12. i'd like to see source from NASA's Spirit and Opportunity robots.

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  13. i would like to see the high level language MAC (MIT Algebraic Compiler) they supposedly used for development.

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  14. I spotted a bug. It looks like they set co-ordinates to a desert in Nevada rather than the Moon ;)

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  15. I dont like how line 847 looks on the lunar landing file...

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  16. Memory Access Violation Protected Mode

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  17. There's no "FILE NOT FOUND" message or "Press any Key to Continue"

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  18. How would they catch a stack overflow exception?

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  19. What would have happened if they found these errors?

    Error Reading Setup Initialization File or

    I am getting the "A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart"

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  20. looks like they used 8 decimal points of pi to fly to the moon.

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  21. Don Eyles is a pretty cool guy, it's interesting to see him in that picture from 40 years ago - same man but with glasses and white hair. He once displayed some Apollo artifacts as part of an art exhibit in the neighborhood I lived in, including that same LUMINARY tome and an actual memory module. Fascinating stuff!

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  22. It looks like you're landing a spaceship.

    Would you like help?

    * Get help with landing the spaceship

    * Just land the spaceship without help

    [] Don't show this tip again

    @

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  23. 12/18/1970 ?

    Think thy touched down in 1969 ?

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  24. Can you tell whether it is this Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) that displayed an "error 1202" during Apollo 11 landing on the moon and forced Armstrong to moonland manually ?

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  25. I can see a Guildenstern, but where's Rosencrantz? What happens if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead?

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  26. Nice Post
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  27. very nice post thanks for the info....

    colleges

    collegelook

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  28. After 40 years,I am very glad for remembered of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.I really proud for him and prayed for his holy soul,Thanks. naats

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