AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer) ja DSKY (Display and Keyboard)
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) oli tietokone, jota käytettiin Apollo-ohjelman avaruusaluksissa. Tietokone hoiti aluksen ohjaukseen ja navigointiin liittyviä tehtäviä. [...] RAM-muistia oli 2 kilosanaa, ja ROM-muistia 36 kilosanaa; sanan pituus oli 16 bittiä. Kellokide värähteli 2,048 MHz taajuudella, joka jaettiin tai skaalattiin tarpeen mukaan eri käyttötarkoituksiin; pääasiallinen sisäinen kellotaajuus oli 1,024 MHz. —Wikipedia
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) -tietokoneessa oli vähemmän laskentatehoa kuin taskulaskimessa tai rannekellossa.[1] Nasan mukaan tämän tasoisella tekniikalla ja kahden megahertsin teholla astronautit kykenivät lentämään Kuuhun ja Kuun kiertoradalla, jossa avaruusalukset lentävät tyhjiössä tuhansia kilometrejä tunnissa, suorittamaan kuu- ja komentomoduulin telakoitumisia. Telakoitumisen täytyi osua kohdalleen sekunnin tarkkuudella ja yrityksiä oli ainoastaan yksi.
Komento- ja kuumoduulin ydin köysi muisti [Core Rope Memory] ei todellisuudessa toiminut (ja sitä voitiin pitää ainoastaan vitsinä) [...] Lyhyesti, tässä tietokoneessa ei ollut muistia, ei yhtään. Ei ROMia tai RAMia. [...] Ohjelmat itsessään olivat täynnä syntaksi- ja logiikkavirheitä. Osa koodin sarjoista ei yksinkertaisesti tehnyt mitään. [...] DSKY [näyttö ja näppäimistö] -yksikön kanssa, joka ei toiminut kunnolla, AGC vaikuttaa aivan varmasti olevan totaalinen väärennös. Mutta mikäli tämä Apollo Guidance Computer oli vitsi, se johtui siitä, että insinöörit suunnittelivat sen sellaiseksi, ei sen takia että he olivat epäpäteviä. Insinöörit asettivat epäyhtenäisyyksiä joka paikkaan. Kaikki elektroniset liittymät tungettiin täyteen tahallisia virheitä.[2] —Xavier Pascal
AGC:tä käsittelevässä artikkelissaan tietokoneinsinööri Xavier Pascal tekee yhteenvedon AGC:stä,[3]
- Vähäinen laskentateho
- Ei muistia
- Ei-automaattinen
- Totaalinen väärennös
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[1] Randy Walsh, Apollo Moon Missions: Hiding a Hoax in Plain Sight - Part I, (2018), s. 80, 91-93; Bart Sibrel, Moon Man: The True Story of a Filmmaker on the CIA Hit List, Washington, D.C., (2021), s. 3-4, 11; Ksm. Walsh, "Navigation and the Apollo Guidance Computer", s. 73-100; Sibrel, s. 147.
[2] Xavier Pascal, Was the Apollo Computer flawed?, AULIS Online, (2012 | Updated, October 2013); Ksm. Xavier Pascal, Was the Apollo Computer flawed? Apollo Guidance Computer Memory Update, AULIS Online, (October 2013).
[3] Walsh, s. 93.
Moreover, there is no connection between the two transistors of the second pair of the push-pull, it means that the second edge of the sense impulse cannot be amplified. This omission is clearly intended as a clue of the fakery. The missing connection between the base and the collector is certainly not accidental, as this 'mistake' exists in two different schematics, one in a document dated 1966, and the other in a document dated 1972. In an article published in January 1967, Albert L. Hopkins of MIT shows the schematic of the amplifier, and, on this schematic, the bug of the missing correction has been corrected; as the Hopkins article was published between the dates of the two documents in which the error exists, it shows that the argument that there might have been a decision about adding this connection or removing it does not hold. Hopkins corrected this mistake to attract attention to show that something was abnormal. Nevertheless, Hopkins left the error of the incorrectly-mounted output transistor. —Xavier Pascal, Was the Apollo Computer flawed? Apollo Guidance Computer Memory Update, AULIS Online, (October 2013).
If no core rope memory has ever been used apart for the AGC (at least in the way it was designed for Apollo) – which is certainly not the case of the normal erasable core memory that can actually work. Therefore, if the ROM memory of Apollo computer couldn't work, could we at least have expected that the RAM memory would have worked? No. The engineers even managed to make the erasable memory unable to work as well! —Xavier Pascal, Was the Apollo Computer flawed? Apollo Guidance Computer Memory Update, AULIS Online, (October 2013).
Now, what's abnormal is that the write current loop and the read current loop have a common part: it is the same wire which allows it to both change the magnetic field of a core and also to sense the impulse which is generated by the change of magnetic field of a core. This is absolutely impossible: The wire that allows it to generate the change of magnetic field of the core by sending a current into it cannot also get the impulse generated by the change of the magnetic field; this change of magnetic field has to be detected in another wire, called a sense wire; the wire generating the impulse and the one reading it cannot be the same. Not under any circumstances. And what makes it all the more absurd is that the current of the write loop and the current of the read loop go in converse direction in their common part! You might have thought that it was incoherent enough for the engineer fakers to be satisfied? Oh no, they had to add even more. —Xavier Pascal, Was the Apollo Computer flawed? Apollo Guidance Computer Memory Update, AULIS Online, (October 2013).
This [AGC] interface is so bad, it has so many handicaps, that it had absolutely no chance of working. Not at all. Moreover, the design engineers must have known this, as they obviously wanted it to be extremely bad and for it not to work. [...] No doubt, as with anomalies in the Apollo imagery, the NASA design engineers and technical writers were hoping that at some point these matters would be exposed. [...] So, as incredible as it may seem, according to NASA's published documentation, neither the ROM memory nor the RAM memory of the Apollo Guidance Computer could have ever worked. —Xavier Pascal, Was the Apollo Computer flawed? Apollo Guidance Computer Memory Update, AULIS Online, (October 2013).
Some readers will recall that (and younger readers might want to cover their eyes here, because the information to follow is quite shocking), in the 1960s, a full complement of home electronics consisted of a fuzzy, 13-channel, black-and-white television set with a rotary tuning dial, rabbit ears and no remote. Such cutting-edge technology as the pocket calculator was still five years away from hitting the consumer market. [...] "But wait," you say, "NASA has solid evidence of the validity of the Moon landings. They have, for example, all of that film footage shot on the moon and beamed live directly into our television sets." Since we’re on the subject, I have to mention that transmitting live footage back from the Moon was another rather innovative use of 1960s technology. More than two decades later, we would have trouble broadcasting live footage from the deserts of the Middle East, but in 1969, we could beam that shit back from the Moon with nary a technical glitch! —Dave McGowan, Wagging the Moondoggie: Part I, The Center for an Informed America, (Oct 1, 2009).
Moving on then to the other Science Channel offering, a 2005 effort entitled First on the Moon: The Untold Story, we learn that Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas "was not as high-tech as it looked." On television, it looked pretty damned impressive, for the era at least. As anyone alive at the time recalls, what the world saw was an enormous room filled with computer consoles, each staffed by a key member of the Apollo team diligently monitoring his computer screen for any signs of trouble. But in reality, as Apollo 11 computer engineer Jack Garman clues us in, "the computer screens that we looked at in Mission Control weren’t computer screens at all. They were televisions. All the letters, or characters, [they] were all hand drawn. I don’t necessarily mean with a brush, but I mean they were painted on a slide." But they sure looked pretty damned impressive. Jack Garman, by the way, was not just some random, low-level computer hack recruited by the Science Channel to offer commentary. According to the official legend, Garman was the guy on the Apollo 11 crew who cleared the Eagle to land despite the fact that multiple alarms were going off. That would tend to indicate that he was a pretty important player at Mission Control. Every one of those consoles on the floor of Mission Control was powered by a single mainframe computer – a single mainframe computer that had the computing power of a single laptop computer. Actually, make that a 2005-era laptop computer. And the spaceship itself, that multi-staged engineering marvel, carried a computer roughly equivalent to what powers a modern digital watch. —Dave McGowan, Wagging the Moondoggie: Part VIII, The Center for an Informed America, (Nov 22, 2009).
The first Apollo contract was awarded [...] in July of 1961, for the sophisticated navigation system that would allegedly guide the spacecraft to the Moon. In an unusual move, NASA opted not to solicit bids for the guidance system; instead, the contract was handed directly to MIT, generating "immediate controversy," as noted by [documentary] Moon Machines [2008]. As one of the show's talking-heads noted, "There was actually a budding industry out there that had developed guidance systems and people from industry were quite upset. They felt that they should have been given the chance to bid on the contract – and a university is not ordinarily what the government contracts out to build hardware for operational systems." There was, alas, nothing ordinary about the Apollo project. The man NASA turned to first, long before awarding any of the other Apollo contracts, was one Charles Draper, who ran MIT's instrumentation lab, which would later carry Draper’s name. Draper was generally described as an eccentric, charismatic, colorful gent whose background was in physics and, curiously, psychology. He is widely considered to be the father of the inertial guidance system. Perhaps significantly, Bill Kaysing, the first Apollo skeptic to gain prominence, has claimed that it was MIT (in conjunction with DARPA) that provided NASA with the blueprint for how to plausibly simulate manned trips to the Moon. If true, then it of course makes perfect sense that NASA would have turned directly and immediately to MIT, and would have done so without taking any outside bids. Until MIT completed their work and provided the space agency with an outline of the project, it would seem, NASA wouldn't have known what other contracts to award. The fact that the project landed on the desk of Charles Draper is perhaps significant, given that the name 'Draper' is a rather notorious one in twentieth century American history – and one that is closely tied to the name 'Bush.' It is a name that appears more than once on the membership list of everyone's favorite secret society, Skull & Bones (Herbert Draper Gallaudet [1898], Arthur Draper [1937], William Draper III [1950]). It is a name that was prominently featured in the American eugenics movement, with General William Draper, Jr. serving as founder and chairman of the Population Crisis Committee and vice-chairman of the Birth Control League (as Planned Parenthood was originally known). General Draper, a close friend of the Bush family, also helped finance the 1932 International Eugenics Conference. Many years later, during the Apollo era, Draper advised LBJ on population reduction strategies. The Draper family was also, not too shockingly, involved in the financing and maintenance of the Nazi regime. General Draper joined Dillon Read in 1927 and for many years was tasked with personally handling the account of Nazi industrialist/financier Fritz Thyssen. At the close of WWII, Draper was appointed Chief of the Economic Division of the Joint Allied Control Council for Germany – he was, in other words, the man who was supposed to oversee the economic de-Nazification of Germany. Just months later, in October 1945, Draper reported that the German economy had magically been de-Nazified. Needless to say, nothing could have been further from the truth. One final note about General Draper (whose son, Bonesman William Draper III, served as the chief of fundraising for George Bush's 1980 presidential campaign): he was a member of the Society of American Magicians. In other words, William Draper, Jr. considered himself to be something of an expert in the art of illusion. Perhaps the same could be said of Charles Draper of MIT. According to [documentary] Moon Machines [2008], Draper and his team got to work on the Apollo guidance system in the spring of 1962. Given that Moon Machines also contends that the contract was awarded to MIT in early summer of 1961, the question that is naturally begged is: why, with the clock ticking and with an absurdly short timeframe to pull the Apollo project together, would the MIT team have waited almost a year to get started? Or did they, in fact, spend that first year working on their real assignment – mapping out the key elements of the simulation? —Dave McGowan, Wagging the Moondoggie: Part XII, The Center for an Informed America, (Feb 23, 2010).
