In Foyles, I bought Digital Apollo, by David A. Mindell. It’s about the design of control systems, and in particular the interactions between astronauts, test pilots, designers and user interfaces. The astronauts at first wanted to be able to do everything manually. In the end, they accepted a lot of computer control, partly because they had some influence in the design of the systems. At least that’s what it seems like from the few bits I’ve read so far.
This is quite profound:
The digital autopilot also confirmed the decision to use a general-purpose computer in the first place and underscored the intimate links between systems engineering and digital computing. Engineers could move particular functions out of hardware devices and into computer programs, saving critical quantities of weight, money and hardware complexity. In one example, Shea nixed an expensive program to add a heat shield for the side of the command module facing the sun. With his knowlege of control systems and the digital autopilot, he simply suggested replacing the insulation with a software routine to keep the spacecraft rotating like a rotissarie, distributing the heat load around the craft. A few lines of computer code replaced a heavy mechanical structure.
The book also contains the astonishing (to me) revelation that computer programs were stored on core rope memory — where wires are threaded through ferrite donuts to represent a 1, or around to represent a 0. These ropes were threaded by hand by little old ladies, earning the ropes the nickname of LOL memory.
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Interesting post dude, how did you obtain it? It sounds really intense. Especially because it’s used by astronauts.