Now? NASA's budget is $21B, while the GDP is about $20,000B, or more like 0.1%. It's high, considering the payback, but not the budget buster.
The US military isn't even the largest line item but it's about $700B so, yes, about 4% of GDP. Seems reasonable.
I counted at least four separate *factual errors* in that article concerning Parkes vs HSK:
The video feed did *not* "initially alternate[d] between the signals being received from its two stations at Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek"; it started at HSK for the first steps and moved to Parkes later. One switch, no alternation.
Parkes was *not* "fully equipped to communicate with Apollo 11" as it had no uplink.
"The Parkes radiotelescope and Honeysuckle Creek stations in Australia received the telemetry from the Lunar Module" but Parkes didn't have equipment to decode the telemetry; it was sent to Honeysuckle for that.
"... including the first television pictures from the first moonwalk for distribution to millions of people on Earth" is not true of Parkes.
Less shallow? Or just propaganda of the kind that John Sarkissian and in fact the whole IEEE has been producing for years?
That might have been true of the video feed that went out to the world. The video transmissions to Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek presumably went through a bit of handshaking before the onward transmissions got going.
I know both the authors
Their opinions are more likely to be correct than yours. The point about the up-link at Parkes is probably correct, but since they could obviously patch through via Honeysuckle Creek it does happen to be immaterial.
Parkes has a visitor's centre and does seem to value popular interest. That doesn't make their publicity fluff "propaganda". Honeysuckle Creek was dismantled ears ago and hasn't got any direct interest in sucking in visitors.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
They have been duped.
I'm not offering opinions. I'm comparing the IEEE claims with established facts. For what it's worth, I had sent the same to Mike Dinn who is also an engineer and was station manager at Honeysuckle Creek at the time. Why didn't you ask him to comment?
He said (3 minutes ago!): "What a refreshingly perceptive, accurate critique! Makes a nice change from all things Parkes- and CSIRO-centric. And any discussion of Australia and Apollo has to include Tidbinbilla, Carnarvon, PMG, OTC, and a whole host of other direct and indirect supporting organisations and individuals. It might have been nice for the IEEEE to have run the article by me. I was/am an engineer, and was at the centre of activities."
Clifford Heath.
Or you have. I wouldn't rate Trevor Bird or Karu Asselle as people who were easy to dupe. You I'm less confident about.
Or what you imagine to be the established facts.
I'm sure that if anybody had known who Mike Dinn was, and that he was still alive and willing to take the time to comment, the article would have been copied to him.
Since you haven't posted the "critique" on which he was commenting - "the same" is a trifle unspecific - this is all just predictable carping and self-advertising.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney > Clifford Heath.
The facts are the ones quoted above, contrary to IEEE claims. Check them yourself. They are not my opinions.
The critique is *still* posted verbatim above, you utter fool.
Self-advertising is what CSIRO, Parkes, and IEEE specialise in. John Sarkissian in particular has a long history of lying about HSK that apparantly continues even after he posted the article linked below. The engineers and operators from HSK have been fighting his lies for decades. Me, I'm just pointing people to factual sources and folk who know what they're talking about.
Clifford Heath.
They aren't "facts". They are interpretations - your interpretations. You can spend as much time as you like insisting that your point of view is correct. but it's still just your point of view.
Pretentious name for a spot of nit-picking carping. It seems that Mike Dinn knows you well enough to be aware that it takes fulsome flattery to stop you being pestiferous.
Of course they. Institution have public relations groups to keep the public image polished and prominent. You seem to have to do it for yourself, with the slight disadvantage that you don't seem to have much to boast about.
The Circuit article didn't play down the role of Honeysuckle Creek. Sadly, it has been dismantled, so there isn't anywhere to stick a commemorative plaque.
I'm sure you enjoy all these exciting personal feuds, but nobody else is interested.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Designed by and built by are not necessarily the same thing. And in this case they are not. The Apollo guidance computer was designed by Draper Labs and built by Raytheon. BTW, where are the cites for the designs other that that one and the IBM one that you claim existed? Of course there are no cites, because those were the only two proposals.
No one claimed otherwise. What you claimed was that it could not have been done with a discrete transistor design. That's not true, the IBM proposal that used discrete devices proved that it was possible. Similar IBM designs were used in Titan and Saturn V and IBM could have won, no one was saying it was impossible because of weight.
snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
4000 IBMers worked on the Apollo Program. They were on the ground, programming the predecessors to the first mainframe computers, and then also on the first mainframe computers. The Army, Air Force and NASA bought them. They were the fastest being made by IBM. They took up entire rooms and had miles/tons of interconnection wiring.The computer contained guidance chips made by fairchild in the guidance computers of both the Command Module and the LEM.
They led the way in missile guidance at the time.
snipped-for-privacy@decadence.org wrote in news:qh9hqg$1q8v$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org:
snip
It's a very good question. I agree, much of what we hear about has been school kids providing ants to send into space and similar. IDK of any real scientific breakthrough that's come from any of the space experiments. I think it's a good idea to be doing space exploration, but we also need to be honest about what value it has. And spending billions for a manned mission to the moon or anywhere else for that matter, seems like a bad idea when we're already borrowing $1 tril a year. That can't go on forever. Having men on the moon and the US defaulting on it's debt would be a bad tradeoff.
Irrelevant of course to the fact that IBM had designed and built the guidance computer used in Titan ICBMs and in the Saturn V. And that IBM was one of the two competing designs for the Apollo guidance computer. All of these computers used discrete transistor designs. It was a close call, the other design from Draper Labs won. But no one said that the IBM design was not also viable. Until you showed up, that is.
They were not "guidance chips", they were just basic NOR gates, two of them in one IC.
BS. Fairchild never lead the way in missile guidance, ever. They were a semiconductor company.
And in fact, Fairchild was not the actual supplier of the NOR chips used in Apollo at all. They licensed their design to Philco Ford and they supplied them. Exactly why isn't clear.
Wrong, always wrong.
The flight hardware could have been done with hybrids, like the IBM SLT logic.
Hybrids were the next new thing until ICs finally got fast and reliable.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
No. It is about what they were actually using.
Guided missile design and characterizations were done on those old tube based machines, and then continued when they bought early solid state machines and BOTH were used in the Gemini and Apollo programs, and when NASA itself was created.
They and the Army and the Air Force (yes it is related) all likely used IBM 1401 computers. It was IBM's top seller.
The compute devices used in the missiles is considerably smaller.
snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
The control computers. The parts that stay on the ground, in the silo, and at NORAD.
Titan guidance was by AC Spark Plug.
Titan II guidance was by Delco of GM and then Litton Industries.
IBM did not "supply" them. IBM designed and programmed them and mil contractors manufactured them. They were inertial, which means they had moving parts.
snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
You are blind they used all they had, and that included those.
snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net wrote in news:3b4e690d-8b4d-4f7a-aec7- snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
I'd be glad if you stopped breathing.
It did use chips. They were made by Fairchild.
snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
Make another retarded, homophobe remark, and I'll leave a bag of burning shit on your doorstep, and knock on your door with a 5 pound sledge. Then I'll pop a GoPro in the hole that makes, and take a vid of your fat ass running around like a stuck pig while I declare "Here's Johnny!"
That's a lie. I've provided the cites that show Titan II used guidance computers from IBM which were built using discrete transistors, not ICs.
Here it is again, stupid:
"ASC-15 for Titan II
The first inertial guidance system for the Titan II was built by AC Spark P lug, and included an inertial measurement unit based in designs from Draper Labs at MIT and the ASC-15 computer designed and built by IBM in Owego, NY . The first Titan II missile carrying this system was launched 16 March 196
The ASC-15 (Advance System Controller Model 15) was a digital computer deve loped by International Business Machines (IBM) for use on the Titan II inte rcontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).[1][2] It was subsequently modified a nd used on the Titan III and Saturn I Block II launch vehicles.
Its principal function on these rockets was to make navigation calculations using data from inertial sensor systems. It also performed readiness check s before launch.[3] It was a digital serial processor using fixed-point dat a with 27-bit words. The storage was a drum memory. Electronic circuits wer e welded encapsulated modules, consisting of discrete resistors, transistor s, capacitors, and other components welded together and encapsulated in a f oam material. It was manufactured in the IBM plant at Owego, NY.[4] "
And again, even APOLLO used NOR gates not manufactured by Fairchild, but from Philco Ford, which Fairchild had licensed to manufacture them.
Wrong, always wrong.
We were talking about what technology was going into APOLLO stupid. Not about the installed base of computers in the world.
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