The Apollo program contributed to computer development

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The Apollo program contributed to computer development

Post by Chuckt » Thu Jan 28, 2016 4:29 am

The co-investment between defense and civilian space was very real and hugely important," said Hubbard.

"With Apollo, they needed to cut down on weight and power consumption. Mass into space equals money," he said. "It has been and continues to be about $10,000 a pound to get to lower Earth orbit. They certainly don't want computers that take up basketball courts. They want something very powerful and very light that doesn't take massive power. That was one of the driving requirements that led to the development of the integrated circuit, where you put all the components on a chip rather than having a board stuffed with individual transistors and other circuit components."

He added that the microchip took the high-tech industry to a place of mass production and economies of scale.

"There was a major shift in electronics and computing and at least half credit goes to Apollo," said Hubbard. "Without it, you wouldn't have a laptop. You'd still have things like the Univac."

http://www.computerworld.com/article/25 ... story.html

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Re: The Apollo program contributed to computer development

Post by Chuckt » Thu Jan 28, 2016 6:52 am

The 68000 was on the Space Shuttle because they had a radiation hardened version:
The 68000 line of processors has been used in a variety of systems, from modern high-end Texas Instruments calculators (the TI-89, TI-92, and Voyage 200 lines) to all of the members of the Palm Pilot series that run Palm OS 1.x to 4.x (OS 5.x is ARM-based), and even radiation hardened versions in the critical control systems of the Space Shuttle. However, they became most well known as the processors powering desktop computers such as the Apple Macintosh, the Commodore Amiga, the Sinclair QL, the Atari ST, and several others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000_series
Built by Honeywell Aerospace, each MEC originally comprised two redundant Honeywell HDC-601 computers,[12] later upgraded to a system composed of two doubly redundant Motorola 68000 (M68000) processors (for a total of 4 M68000s per controller).[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine

[132] ....the early 1980s, Marshall Space Flight Center began studying a Block II controller design because it was becoming impossible to find parts and programmers for the late 1960s components of the Block I183. The revised computer uses a Motorola 68000 32-bit microprocessor. When selected, it was clearly the state of the art. Instead of plated wire, a CMOS-type semiconductor random-access memory is used. Finally, the software is written in the high-level programming language, C. Such a computer reflects the current design and components of a ground-based, powerful digital control system. The C language is also known as an excellent tool for software systems development. In fact, the UNIX operating system is coded in it.
http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-8.html

The CPUs of Spacecraft
Computers in Space

http://www.cpushack.com/space-craft-cpu.html

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Re: The Apollo program contributed to computer development

Post by brad » Sun Jan 31, 2016 1:03 pm

Fantastic links chuck, this will serve well in my digital electronics classes. They may be interested to know that alot of what we have up in space runs on less than an 80386 processor!

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Re: The Apollo program contributed to computer development

Post by Chuckt » Sun Jan 31, 2016 10:53 pm

I did note they have a hardened Pentium processor. I think the newer chips would be secret and the information is old and I think some of the information on the net is incomplete or old as a lot of computer history that doesn't make it into the computer history museum is lost (apart from interviews in magazines and the like).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening

This post should just be beginning information. American professors would start a course, have me write on a subject and have me teach them when they were supposed to be teaching me. The professors end up knowing everything and I would just get a grade.

If a college has limited resources, how do you continue education as an instructor? You can have your students teach you which teaches the class and themselves.

Chuckt
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Re: The Apollo program contributed to computer development

Post by Chuckt » Mon Feb 01, 2016 8:51 am

brad wrote:Fantastic links chuck, this will serve well in my digital electronics classes. They may be interested to know that alot of what we have up in space runs on less than an 80386 processor!
Someone said the 68000 on the Space Shuttle was replaced by digital signal processors but no examples were given.

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