Saturday, February 01, 2020

Computer hacking

Hacking that saved the Apollo 14 mission.

Stuck bits are bad things. Stuck bits that are the "Abort" button are very bad things. Stuck bits that are the "Abort" button command that are intermittent are even worse. (Best guess is a solder blob was floating around inside the button contact.)

Read about how they fixed it, with a software hack.

BTW, the radar flaked out too, which also made landing problematic: "Using Mark 1 Eyeballs to accurately judge altitude and velocity during a lunar landing is not realistic given the sharply limited amount of fuel the LM carried."

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