Continuing the series of posts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11
As geeks we have been raised with error codes. This Wired article about early '60s computer chips and consoles, early Fortran and primitive consoles and error codes will make your palms sweat. It describes the 1202 error code Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did not recognize on the Eagle lunar module and how close NASA came to abort the landing
"Houston, meanwhile, gave Apollo 11 a GO in spite of the alarms because of how spread apart they were — they came at mission elapsed time 102:38:22; 102:39:02; 102:42:18 (that was the 1201); 102:42:43; and 102:42:58. If they had been closer together it could have wiped out navigation data during a reboot, but being separated even by as few seconds as they were meant that that vital information was retained. The computer behaved exactly as designed, protecting itself in a way that wouldn’t cancel a lunar landing without just cause."
Video below of Working Replica DSKY-AGC Apollo Guidance Computer
To connect sight and touch, the (MIT) CSAIL engineers worked with a KUKA robot arm, a type often used in industrial warehouses. The scientists outfitted it with a special tactile sensor called GelSight—a slab of transparent, synthetic rubber that works as an imaging system. Objects are pressed into GelSight, and then cameras surrounding the slab monitor the impressions.
With a common webcam, the CSAIL team recorded almost 200 objects, including tools, household products, and fabrics being touched by the robot arm over 12,000 times. That created a trove of video clips that the team could break down into 3 million static images, creating a dataset they termed “VisGel.”
Part of a week of posts celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's journey to the moon.
Here is NASA's Mission Overview - a nice catalog of the 8 days from takeoff to the water landing
"Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969, carrying Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin into an initial Earth-orbit of 114 by 116 miles. An estimated 650 million people watched Armstrong's televised image and heard his voice describe the event as he took "...one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" on July 20, 1969.
Two hours, 44 minutes and one-and-a-half revolutions after launch, the S-IVB stage reignited for a second burn of five minutes, 48 seconds, placing Apollo 11 into a translunar orbit. The command and service module, or CSM, Columbia separated from the stage, which included the spacecraft-lunar module adapter, or SLA, containing the lunar module, or LM, Eagle. After transposition and jettisoning of the SLA panels on the S-IVB stage, the CSM docked with the LM. The S-IVB stage separated and injected into heliocentric orbit four hours, 40 minutes into the flight.
The first color TV transmission to Earth from Apollo 11 occurred during the translunar coast of the CSM/LM. Later, on July 17, a three-second burn of the SPS was made to perform the second of four scheduled midcourse corrections programmed for the flight. The launch had been so successful that the other three were not needed.
On July 18, Armstrong and Aldrin put on their spacesuits and climbed through the docking tunnel from Columbia to Eagle to check out the LM, and to make the second TV transmission.
On July 19, after Apollo 11 had flown behind the moon out of contact with Earth, came the first lunar orbit insertion maneuver. At about 75 hours, 50 minutes into the flight, a retrograde firing of the SPS for 357.5 seconds placed the spacecraft into an initial, elliptical-lunar orbit of 69 by 190 miles. Later, a second burn of the SPS for 17 seconds placed the docked vehicles into a lunar orbit of 62 by 70.5 miles, which was calculated to change the orbit of the CSM piloted by Collins. The change happened because of lunar-gravity perturbations to the nominal 69 miles required for subsequent LM rendezvous and docking after completion of the lunar landing. Before this second SPS firing, another TV transmission was made, this time from the surface of the moon.
On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin entered the LM again, made a final check, and at 100 hours, 12 minutes into the flight, the Eagle undocked and separated from Columbia for visual inspection. At 101 hours, 36 minutes, when the LM was behind the moon on its 13th orbit, the LM descent engine fired for 30 seconds to provide retrograde thrust and commence descent orbit insertion, changing to an orbit of 9 by 67 miles, on a trajectory that was virtually identical to that flown by Apollo 10. At 102 hours, 33 minutes, after Columbia and Eagle had reappeared from behind the moon and when the LM was about 300 miles uprange, powered descent initiation was performed with the descent engine firing for 756.3 seconds. After eight minutes, the LM was at "high gate" about 26,000 feet above the surface and about five miles from the landing site.
The descent engine continued to provide braking thrust until about 102 hours, 45 minutes into the mission. Partially piloted manually by Armstrong, the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility in Site 2 at 0 degrees, 41 minutes, 15 seconds north latitude and 23 degrees, 26 minutes east longitude. This was about four miles downrange from the predicted touchdown point and occurred almost one-and-a-half minutes earlier than scheduled. It included a powered descent that ran a mere nominal 40 seconds longer than preflight planning due to translation maneuvers to avoid a crater during the final phase of landing. Attached to the descent stage was a commemorative plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon and the three astronauts.
The flight plan called for the first EVA to begin after a four-hour rest period, but it was advanced to begin as soon as possible. Nonetheless, it was almost four hours later that Armstrong emerged from the Eagle and deployed the TV camera for the transmission of the event to Earth. At about 109 hours, 42 minutes after launch, Armstrong stepped onto the moon. About 20 minutes later, Aldrin followed him. The camera was then positioned on a tripod about 30 feet from the LM. Half an hour later, President Nixon spoke by telephone link with the astronauts.
Commemorative medallions bearing the names of the three Apollo 1 astronauts who lost their lives in a launch pad fire, and two cosmonauts who also died in accidents, were left on the moon's surface. A one-and-a-half inch silicon disk, containing micro miniaturized goodwill messages from 73 countries, and the names of congressional and NASA leaders, also stayed behind.
During the EVA, in which they both ranged up to 300 feet from the Eagle, Aldrin deployed the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package, or EASEP, experiments, and Armstrong and Aldrin gathered and verbally reported on the lunar surface samples. After Aldrin had spent one hour, 33 minutes on the surface, he re-entered the LM, followed 41 minutes later by Armstrong. The entire EVA phase lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, ending at 111 hours, 39 minutes into the mission.
Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours, 36 minutes on the moon's surface. After a rest period that included seven hours of sleep, the ascent stage engine fired at 124 hours, 22 minutes. It was shut down 435 seconds later when the Eagle reached an initial orbit of 11 by 55 miles above the moon, and when Columbia was on its 25th revolution. As the ascent stage reached apolune at 125 hours, 19 minutes, the reaction control system, or RCS, fired so as to nearly circularize the Eagle orbit at about 56 miles, some 13 miles below and slightly behind Columbia. Subsequent firings of the LM RCS changed the orbit to 57 by 72 miles. Docking with Columbia occurred on the CSM's 27th revolution at 128 hours, three minutes into the mission. Armstrong and Aldrin returned to the CSM with Collins. Four hours later, the LM jettisoned and remained in lunar orbit.
Trans-Earth injection of the CSM began July 21 as the SPS fired for two-and-a-half minutes when Columbia was behind the moon in its 59th hour of lunar orbit. Following this, the astronauts slept for about 10 hours. An 11.2 second firing of the SPS accomplished the only midcourse correction required on the return flight. The correction was made July 22 at about 150 hours, 30 minutes into the mission. Two more television transmissions were made during the trans-Earth coast.
Re-entry procedures were initiated July 24, 44 hours after leaving lunar orbit. The SM separated from the CM, which was re-oriented to a heat-shield-forward position. Parachute deployment occurred at 195 hours, 13 minutes. After a flight of 195 hours, 18 minutes, 35 seconds - about 36 minutes longer than planned - Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, 13 miles from the recovery ship USS Hornet. Because of bad weather in the target area, the landing point was changed by about 250 miles. Apollo 11 landed 13 degrees, 19 minutes north latitude and 169 degrees, nine minutes west longitude July 24, 1969."
The documentary by Todd Douglas Miller, released earlier this year, did a nice job of summarizing the voyage, the build up and the celebrations upon return
Over the next few days I will be profiling several posts related to the Apollo 11 takeoff, lunar landing and splashdown 50 years ago. My personal celebration, however, started much earlier in the year.
During SAP's event Sapphire in May, BirlaSoft invited me to join a group of their client executives for dinner at the Atlantis Zone at the Kennedy Space Center.
Then on Father's Day last month, my daughter took me to a "Lunch with an Astronaut" - Jon McBride who flew one of the early shuttle missions. Both visits were awe-inspiring - when you think of the boundaries NASA pushes when it comes to rockets, computers, even the diet of astronomers in zero-gravity.
But even more inspiring was the Apollo 11 documentary I saw in March. The amazing production mined "65-millimeter and 70-mm film preserved at the National Archives, as well as 18,000 hours of audio that was largely uncataloged before the documentary's creation." When you think about how primitive computing and communications were in the 1960s (the Apollo 11's onboard guidance computer had a processing speed of 1 MHz, and had about 4 kilobytes of reusable memory) you are even more impressed with the accomplishment.
Riding a wave of interest in mental health tech, companies creating VR content for therapeutic outcomes are receiving a deluge of attention and funding. And, while VR has been used successfully to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since the 1990s, these new programs address a much broader range of conditions. The library of Palo Alto–based Limbix, for instance, includes VR content designed to treat issues including alcohol addiction, claustrophobia and teenage depression. Barcelona-based Psious offers treatments for eating disorders.
Today’s VR content is primarily designed to aid exposure therapy, a treatment for anxiety disorders in which patients are exposed to anxiety-inducing stimuli in a safe, controlled environment, eventually learning that the “threats” they’re worried about are not actually very dangerous. For example, someone who fears heights might visit progressively taller buildings under the guidance of their therapist (in vivo exposure), while someone with PTSD might revisit traumatic memories in therapy sessions (imaginary exposure).
Other neuroscientists are studying zebra finches’ songcraft. Some are becoming expert in the electrical conductivity of sheep skulls. Still more are opting for the classics of high school biology: fruit flies, whose neural setup is relatively simple to behold, or worms, who wring considerable juice from their few neurons. Over the past few years, technology companies have been raiding universities to hire away such people. Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter all hired doctoral candidates from one of Mathis’s recent fellowship programs, she says. “The Ph.D. students would have jobs before they got their degrees.”
Animals have long played important roles in advancing corporate science, of course, particularly for medical treatments. But the leap required to translate insights from the zebra finch’s sound-processing anatomy into Siri’s voice-recognition software—or mouse gaming into a future when Amazon.com Inc. runs all-android warehouses—is of an entirely different order. With whole new industries at stake, the race to unlock the secrets of the animal mind is getting weird.
These trends translate into roughly 5 million households that are renting single-family homes rather than taking out mortgages and building equity, and that’s Amherst’s target market. Its specialty is grabbing run-down properties in nice, middle-class subdivisions—guided by algorithms that help it avoid bidding wars and money pits—which it then spruces up for the new rental generation. Amherst’s typical customers are couples in their early forties with one or two kids and household incomes around $60,000. They’re paying an average rent of $1,450 a month. “That’s almost exactly what they’d pay on a mortgage and other expenses if they owned the house,” says Dobson. “We’re catering to a whole new class of Americans—the former buyers who are now either forced renters or renters by choice.” And Dobson is betting that this new class is a permanent one.
It’s an Amazon best-selling umbrella with waterproof Teflon coating and a wind-defying, fiberglass rib design that can withstand heavy gusts of wind without breakage. Oh, and it has a lifetime replacement guarantee....... over 5,000 Amazon shoppers have given this umbrella a perfect five-star rating.
Unlike Autopilot and similarly pseudo-self-driving systems offered by the likes of Nissan, Super Cruise strictly limits where the driver can use it. As it developed the system, Cadillac hired a company called Ushr to drive every mile of limited-access highway in the US and Canada, using a lidar laser scanner to record all the lane lines, tollbooths, curves, merges, splits, and other features. It trimmed away some useless lidar data (like roadside trees), and compressed what was left until it fit easily on a car’s computer. The resulting map helps the car anticipate things like sharp turns, but it has a more important function.
By matching the car’s location (using GPS) to the map, Cadillac disables the system where it’s not confident that the system can handle the driving. Maybe the car’s lane is ending, or it’s approaching a tollbooth, or reaching the point where the five lanes of the Bay Bridge split into the various highways of Berkeley and Oakland—anything that demands more than staying between the lane lines and a safe distance from the car up ahead. About one-third of a mile before the cutoff point, lights in the steering wheel go from green to red, the driver’s seat buzzes, and the dashboard reads “Super Cruise disengaging, take back control.”
The wind blows more strongly at higher altitudes. That is why wind turbines have grown ever taller. The blade tips of today’s biggest now reach up a dizzying 260 metres, the height of the Transamerica building in San Francisco. Many dream of capturing stronger winds even higher up than that, but building taller turbine masts and constructing blades able to withstand the terrifying stresses involved in high-altitude wind gathering are costly. A number of firms are therefore developing a different and, they hope, ultimately cheaper approach to generating electricity at great heights. Their idea is to skip the mast altogether. Instead they propose to fly kites.
An acceleration in biomimicry
Other neuroscientists are studying zebra finches’ songcraft. Some are becoming expert in the electrical conductivity of sheep skulls. Still more are opting for the classics of high school biology: fruit flies, whose neural setup is relatively simple to behold, or worms, who wring considerable juice from their few neurons. Over the past few years, technology companies have been raiding universities to hire away such people. Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter all hired doctoral candidates from one of Mathis’s recent fellowship programs, she says. “The Ph.D. students would have jobs before they got their degrees.”
Animals have long played important roles in advancing corporate science, of course, particularly for medical treatments. But the leap required to translate insights from the zebra finch’s sound-processing anatomy into Siri’s voice-recognition software—or mouse gaming into a future when Amazon.com Inc. runs all-android warehouses—is of an entirely different order. With whole new industries at stake, the race to unlock the secrets of the animal mind is getting weird.
BusinessWeek
July 10, 2019 in Biology and Biometrics, Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)