OT: 50 years ago today...now...

Submitted by lmgoblue1 on July 20th, 2019 at 10:16 PM

I was 11 years old. It was not only the first year that I ever watched Michigan football but it was the first time we ever landed on the moon. Where were you?

ThomasSowell

July 22nd, 2019 at 6:55 AM ^

Correct. When asked about going back to the moon, NASA Astronaut Don Pettit claims “we don’t have that technology anymore and it’s too painful to build it back.”

NASA admits they lost all the telemetry data from the moon landing. They also admit to recording over all of the original tapes. You know, the tapes proving the “greatest achievement in the history of mankind.”

The “live broadcast” from the moon (238,900 miles away) in 1969 is preposterous.

Robbie Moore

July 20th, 2019 at 10:32 PM ^

Sitting in front of the TV. My grandmother, who was raised in a small dirt poor village in the Polish countryside, didn't believe any of it and got up and went to bed just as Armstrong descended down the ladder.

I miss her.

BLUEinRockford

July 20th, 2019 at 10:33 PM ^

Remember watching the moon landing on our 19" b/w tv. Also watched Ruby shoot Oswald live on same tv. Didn't get a color set till 1972. Just in time for the Munich Olympics.

Qseverus

July 20th, 2019 at 10:49 PM ^

But in the mid- and late-1960s, when the Apollo computers were designed, programmed and built, they were in fact just a few years ahead of our ability to manufacture their circuitry. Computer chips and computer memory were in their infancy—indeed, the Apollo computer was the first computer of any significance to use integrated circuits, computer chips.

The Apollo computers were designed with a kind of memory called “core rope memory.” It was the densest computer memory available at that moment in time—between 10 and 100 times more efficient, in terms of weight and space, of any other memory available, absolutely essential on spacecraft where weight and space were always at a premium.

But core rope memory suffered from one small problem: It had to be made by hand.

Each wire representing a 1 or a 0 in the computer program had to be positioned with absolute precision, by a person, using a needle, and wire instead of thread. A wire threaded through the center of a tiny ring-shaped magnet was a one. A wire threaded to the outside of that magnet was a zero.

And so the most remarkable computer of its era—not just a space-age computer, but a spaceship flight computer—had circuitry that was hand-woven, by women, many of them former textile workers, in a Raytheon factory in Waltham, Massachusetts.

https://www.history.com/news/moon-landing-technology-inventions-computers-heat-shield-rovers

 

BlueMan80

July 20th, 2019 at 11:10 PM ^

The first programmable telephone switch used a variant of this memory.  Given it was a telephone switch that had to operate 24/7, the main program store memory itself was a set of aluminum cards with small square magnets.  Each row was a word of memory.  If the magnet was activated, it was a one.  No charge was a zero.  So, yes, you could literally see what a bit of memory looked like.  Programming the cards was done with a crazy machine that pulled a rack of cards out and magnetized/demagnetized the bits.

So, yeah, I too marvel at the state of technology used to get men to the moon 50 years ago as I sat on the floor, 11 years old, looking at a fuzzy black and white TV picture.  This totally inspired me to be an engineer.

Finally, the Saturn 5 rocket was the largest analog machine ever built.  

TomBradyBunch

July 20th, 2019 at 10:52 PM ^

I was expecting a Buckeye troll telling me UM won their last consensus NC 50 years ago.  Pleasant surprise 

NittanyFan

July 21st, 2019 at 11:29 AM ^

Cincinnati was another Ohio city that definitely "laid claim" to Armstrong.  Armstrong settled down in Cinci following the Apollo mission.  He taught Aerospace Engineering classes at UC for ~ 10 years.  

(that would be pretty cool to have had Armstrong for a University professor!)

Hail Harbo

July 20th, 2019 at 11:09 PM ^

It was my ninth summer and I remember it was a Sunday, we had gone camping that weekend, exploring the sinkholes in the Alpena area.  Anyway, we climbed up out of the mosquito infested hell when either my uncle or father said, turn on the radio, it's about time for them to land on the moon.  So there we were, the northern boondocks of Michigan, fending off mosquitoes which would later be known as space shuttles, listening to the Eagle being landed.

MGoAragorn

July 20th, 2019 at 11:45 PM ^

I was at a Boy Scout National Jamboree in Idaho. Each troop had a telephone pole with a single electric plug. Someone plugged a TV in and we stood around it, watching the landing.

Ibow

July 21st, 2019 at 12:57 AM ^

I was at a church camp out for boys up in Empire, Mi and I also was around 10 or 11 years old at the time. We heard about it but we were too busy snaring critters, catching little salamanders, making our own meals, having fires & tying knots. Good times.

I was however very ingrained in the whole M culture by that time thanks to family. Go Blue - from here to the moon & back.

brad

July 21st, 2019 at 1:52 AM ^

Not alive.

 

If anyone here hasn't done it yet, go to Cape Canaveral and walk along the length of the Saturn V rocket they have laying down there.  It's taken apart by stage, and it is truly mind-blowing.  Imagine sitting in the tiny capsule on top of that monster and aiming toward the moon.  The combination of guts and intellect these few people had that willingly said "yes" to that seems unattainable these days.

brad

July 21st, 2019 at 1:52 AM ^

Not alive.

 

If anyone here hasn't done it yet, go to Cape Canaveral and walk along the length of the Saturn V rocket they have laying down there.  It's taken apart by stage, and it is truly mind-blowing.  Imagine sitting in the tiny capsule on top of that monster and aiming toward the moon.  The combination of guts and intellect these few people had that willingly said "yes" to that seems unattainable these days.