Elon Musk On Why First Moon Landing Was An 'Anomaly'

benzinga.com ^ | 11/27/2022 | Shivdeep Dhaliwal

[BiteYourSelf]

🙄

[Freedom4US]

Well they weren’t running a Windows program, or it would have “crashed”, there was an error in the checklist, a switch in the wrong position, that confused the radar system or somesuch, that’s why the 1202 errors.

But the system just prioritized and kept on keeping on. We can talk about how primitive the hardware was, but the computer code they wrote to run was pretty tight. This was done under contract by MIT, at the Draper laboratory. Charles Draper was one of those once in a lifetime kind of special geniuses, he’d cut his teeth on sophisticated wartime aircraft navigational instruments so he was a natural to get heavily involved in Apollo.

Parts of the software program were actually hard wired into the spacecraft itself, as “core memory”, custom tailored and specifically wired for each unique mission. Tiny wire loops around an iron core, bazillions of them, each representing bits and bytes, 1s and 0s, made by the nice ladies at Raytheon or wherever. There’s a pretty good YouTube video transcription of period NASA films showing the process, it was amazingly labor intensive and time consuming.

[JustaTech]

Even harder to believe that we did it using slide rules when the most powerful supercomputers in existence had less computational power than a smartphone.

Smartphones need all that crunching power for the GUI and for multithreading numerous tasks simultaneously while running relatively inefficient code compiled or interpreted from human-friendly computer language. The pieces of critical code which actually interact with the hardware are mostly 'drivers', but in the spectrum of modern software drivers represent a relatively small patch. Most code is designed to interact with us rather our hardware.

In the days of Apollo virtually all the software interacted directly with the hardware, it was all drivers so to speak, and the very tight code was painstaking created manually by humans working at the machine language level. Tight code is almost magic.

[TheDon]

With skies full of starlink satellites.

[alexander_busek]

Nothing like screwing with a celestial body that controls so much of our planet's systems.

Are you seriously suggesting that we might inadvertently "tip it over?!"

Nothing Man can do in or on or to the Moon would have any measurable effect upon Earth and its "systems."

Regards,

[minnesota_bound]

He should use his big rocket to create another skylab.

[Samurai_Jack]

There’s no question that it was a dangerous adventure. Musk makes a good point. We went to the moon in a ship made of tin foil, hardwired with cathode ray tubes and slide rules. It’s amazing what you can get done with a national focus and neverending truckloads of cash.

[Semper Vigilantis]

Truly amazing. I don’t remember the Mercury missions, but do remember Gemini and Apollo. We were stationed in Italy when Neil and Buzz walked on the moon. We watched it on Italian TV surrounded by Italians and other USAF families. I was so proud. The memory still makes my heart swell.

I am currently reading ‘Rocket Men’, a book about the Apollo 8 mission. The first time men went to, and orbited, the moon. They describe planning the mission - go to the moon, orbit 10 times at 69 miles altitude, then return to Earth - as throwing a dart at a peach from 28 feet away and grazing the fuzz but not touching the skin. To complicate things the moon is moving at 2300 MPH, so throw the peach up in the air - THEN throw the dart. Truly amazing.

I look around now and wonder WHY anyone would want to destroy that. The pride I felt in ‘69 has turned to a deep sadness.

[blitz128]

I have won many bets over this song
Ask them to listen and tell me what John is saying on this one line
Never lost
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone

[GOPJ]

They describe planning the mission - go to the moon, orbit 10 times at 69 miles altitude, then return to Earth - as throwing a dart at a peach from 28 feet away and grazing the fuzz but not touching the skin. To complicate things the moon is moving at 2300 MPH, so throw the peach up in the air - THEN throw the dart. Truly amazing.

The event has a myth quality to it. I remember it too - was living in Florida at the time. We were all blown away.

[Wilderness Conservative]

I never believed the moon landings were fake but after witnessing all the BS the government has served in the last 22 years, I have to wonder.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Build a city on Mars. Not likely.

[GOPJ]

You’re right. Primitive tools, but lots of courage involved. What a different time.

Just flying around the moon and coming back would have been a great accomplishment.

[dforest]

Reading this thread I am thinking we never really went to the moon. We have been lied to for so long.

Why haven’t we returned to the moon? Why would we bother because there was supposedly nothing there but a bunch of rocks?

I really wanna believe we did...but I don’t know. It sure looked like we did.

[no-to-illegals]

Probably are everywhere or in our DNA

[SamAdams76]

Musk had a point there. During the decade of the 1960s, the "moon shot" became a national obsession. The end result being that we achieved our goal but aside from making a few bootprints, planting a flag, collecting a few rocks and driving a little buggy around (must have been fun), we didn't really do much there. Now it's a half century later and we haven't even gone back yet. We had to get there so the Russians wouldn't beat us to it and make us sleep under a Communist moon.

Still, it wasn't all a waste. A lot of great technologies (besides powdered orange drink) came from it.

[1Old Pro]

I think it would be a great goal for civilization to bring K-12 education to the new century. We’ve let it die on the vine with the current system we have. We should have dozens of different kinds of private schools that people can choose from and use the current dollars to follow the students.

[NorthMountain]

Supporting generations of negro welfare left no money for anything else.

People who bitch about the cost of Apollo forget that "expensive" is relative. Apollo was cheap compared to the Welfare State.

We still have the Welfare State, which increases in cost every year.

Apollo is a distant memory.

[NorthMountain]

Saturn V was not ICBM based.

[NorthMountain]

Why haven’t we returned to the moon?

It costs a lot of money which is much better spent on welfare, graft, and corruption. Instead of wasting our money on space travel, we have invested it in creating a permanent wealthy political class and a permanent indigent parasite class.