1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,460 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,460 --> 00:00:03,870 Commons license. 3 00:00:03,870 --> 00:00:06,910 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue to 4 00:00:06,910 --> 00:00:10,560 offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,560 --> 00:00:13,460 To make a donation or view additional materials from 6 00:00:13,460 --> 00:00:17,390 hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare at 7 00:00:17,390 --> 00:00:18,640 ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:21,295 --> 00:00:23,590 PROFESSOR: Some funny things happened on the way to the 9 00:00:23,590 --> 00:00:27,690 moon, as a takeoff of Funny Things Happened on 10 00:00:27,690 --> 00:00:29,730 the Way to the Forum. 11 00:00:29,730 --> 00:00:34,220 And probably not too many people in this 12 00:00:34,220 --> 00:00:35,660 audience know that. 13 00:00:38,630 --> 00:00:49,020 Also, in particular, a thing that's happening this year is 14 00:00:49,020 --> 00:00:54,450 the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing. 15 00:00:54,450 --> 00:00:57,660 And we're going to talk a little bit 16 00:00:57,660 --> 00:00:59,840 about how MIT got involved. 17 00:00:59,840 --> 00:01:03,870 And let's see if we can move this along. 18 00:01:08,040 --> 00:01:15,920 Sputnik was about the size of a large, maybe oversized beach 19 00:01:15,920 --> 00:01:23,360 ball, or a basketball. 20 00:01:23,360 --> 00:01:34,800 And it was launched in June, of 1957, or 21 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:36,730 later, maybe not June. 22 00:01:36,730 --> 00:01:38,730 I thought I had it on the screen. 23 00:01:38,730 --> 00:01:46,150 But anyhow, if it hadn't been for Sputnik, I doubt if 24 00:01:46,150 --> 00:01:50,360 anything would have happened in terms of the United States 25 00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:54,170 getting interested in the space program. 26 00:01:54,170 --> 00:01:59,680 So we have to have a lot of gratitude for the Russians for 27 00:01:59,680 --> 00:02:00,730 doing this. 28 00:02:00,730 --> 00:02:06,000 I remember Wernher von Braun in a meeting was asked, this 29 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:10,770 was after maybe six months of the program, says, "Wouldn't 30 00:02:10,770 --> 00:02:13,780 we do a lot better if we collaborated with the 31 00:02:13,780 --> 00:02:17,810 Russians?" And he, without hesitation, said, "If there 32 00:02:17,810 --> 00:02:20,330 were collaboration with the Russians, there wouldn't be a 33 00:02:20,330 --> 00:02:24,990 program in either country." So it had all to do with the 34 00:02:24,990 --> 00:02:27,380 race, the race for the moon. 35 00:02:29,950 --> 00:02:34,760 It was October 4, I'm sorry, 1957. 36 00:02:34,760 --> 00:02:39,810 Right after the lunar landing, Dave Hoag and I were invited 37 00:02:39,810 --> 00:02:46,080 to the Soviet Union as their guests, all expenses paid. 38 00:02:46,080 --> 00:02:49,400 It was really quite an experience. 39 00:02:49,400 --> 00:02:51,990 And they gave us a good show. 40 00:02:51,990 --> 00:02:53,240 Everywhere we went-- 41 00:02:58,970 --> 00:03:01,250 we had some movies of the lunar landing. 42 00:03:01,250 --> 00:03:08,690 And as soon as they knew we had movies, they wanted to-- 43 00:03:08,690 --> 00:03:12,170 they took them and set up their screen. 44 00:03:12,170 --> 00:03:14,970 If the didn't have a screen, they'd put up a bed sheet. 45 00:03:14,970 --> 00:03:18,240 And they oohed and aahed in all of the right places for 46 00:03:18,240 --> 00:03:19,340 the landing. 47 00:03:19,340 --> 00:03:22,400 And it was really quite an experience. 48 00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:26,840 And also they asked us, when will the Americans go to the 49 00:03:26,840 --> 00:03:28,290 moon again? 50 00:03:28,290 --> 00:03:30,200 Well that was Apollo 14. 51 00:03:30,200 --> 00:03:37,120 And the date was sometime in November. 52 00:03:37,120 --> 00:03:45,710 And I was always grateful that it went on time and on that 53 00:03:45,710 --> 00:03:52,020 date, because the Russians never gave any indication of 54 00:03:52,020 --> 00:03:55,970 what they were planning on doing until it was all over. 55 00:03:55,970 --> 00:03:58,480 And then they would take bows, or they 56 00:03:58,480 --> 00:04:00,230 would hide the results. 57 00:04:00,230 --> 00:04:07,740 But anyhow, I happened to buy this little device. 58 00:04:07,740 --> 00:04:09,920 It's actually a music box. 59 00:04:09,920 --> 00:04:13,360 It plays the Russian national anthem. 60 00:04:13,360 --> 00:04:15,730 It used to, but it's all rusted out in there now. 61 00:04:15,730 --> 00:04:18,399 It's been around a long time. 62 00:04:18,399 --> 00:04:21,899 And when we were in Moscow, we went to the 63 00:04:21,899 --> 00:04:24,380 GUM department store. 64 00:04:24,380 --> 00:04:28,550 And I saw this there and bought it. 65 00:04:28,550 --> 00:04:30,190 I'm so glad that I did. 66 00:04:30,190 --> 00:04:32,010 And I brought it home. 67 00:04:38,050 --> 00:04:41,020 1957 is particularly interesting to me, it's 68 00:04:41,020 --> 00:04:51,150 because my son, my youngest son, was born in that year. 69 00:04:51,150 --> 00:04:56,280 And so he really became-- 70 00:04:56,280 --> 00:05:02,490 everything that happened in space, he was right there to 71 00:05:02,490 --> 00:05:05,670 watch it on TV, or whatever news there was. 72 00:05:05,670 --> 00:05:08,760 And he's still much like that today. 73 00:05:12,530 --> 00:05:17,920 This the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory responded to-- 74 00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:24,390 we're going to go into space, so why don't we design a 75 00:05:24,390 --> 00:05:32,820 spacecraft which will indeed take us, not to the moon-- we 76 00:05:32,820 --> 00:05:34,540 aren't going to think about the moon-- but actually into 77 00:05:34,540 --> 00:05:37,780 interplanetary space. 78 00:05:37,780 --> 00:05:46,420 In 1957, when the Sputnik was flying, the MIT 79 00:05:46,420 --> 00:05:51,665 Instrumentation Laboratory was-- 80 00:05:51,665 --> 00:05:55,060 that building on the right is the 81 00:05:55,060 --> 00:05:58,980 Whittemore Shoe Polish factory. 82 00:05:58,980 --> 00:06:04,730 And the one on the left is the old Hood's Milk factory. 83 00:06:04,730 --> 00:06:08,780 And the railroad tracks there are the same tracks that cross 84 00:06:08,780 --> 00:06:11,690 Mass Avenue today. 85 00:06:11,690 --> 00:06:14,180 The buildings, of course, are gone. 86 00:06:14,180 --> 00:06:19,190 And Doc Draper's office is indicated as a little, the 87 00:06:19,190 --> 00:06:21,940 corner of these warehouses. 88 00:06:21,940 --> 00:06:27,510 So we didn't really have plush surroundings. 89 00:06:27,510 --> 00:06:34,480 The thing we wanted to do was to build a Mars probe. 90 00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:38,770 We would like to launch this spacecraft. 91 00:06:38,770 --> 00:06:47,670 And it would coast to Mars and pass close by, take a picture, 92 00:06:47,670 --> 00:06:54,500 and then return to Earth so we could collect the photograph, 93 00:06:54,500 --> 00:06:58,040 not a whole series of photographs, just one picture, 94 00:06:58,040 --> 00:07:01,990 because we didn't want to have all that time and effort 95 00:07:01,990 --> 00:07:11,500 invested and find that the wheel which would change 96 00:07:11,500 --> 00:07:13,870 pictures was screwed up. 97 00:07:13,870 --> 00:07:17,390 So it was just the simplest thing to do, would be to just 98 00:07:17,390 --> 00:07:20,000 have it open the shutter and close it. 99 00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:23,490 And that was the only thing that had to be done. 100 00:07:23,490 --> 00:07:27,810 And we'd do that at the point of closest approach to Mars. 101 00:07:30,380 --> 00:07:36,180 The round trip from Earth to Mars and return, there it is. 102 00:07:36,180 --> 00:07:37,980 We were serious about this. 103 00:07:37,980 --> 00:07:42,680 We were thinking of launching it in December of 1962. 104 00:07:42,680 --> 00:07:49,100 And we would intercept Mars on February 15. 105 00:07:49,100 --> 00:07:52,870 And then we would pass by the planet. 106 00:07:52,870 --> 00:07:55,290 It's not a two-dimensional problem. 107 00:07:55,290 --> 00:07:59,300 This is the relative motion of the spacecraft with respect to 108 00:07:59,300 --> 00:08:07,410 the planet during the planetary contact. 109 00:08:10,130 --> 00:08:13,130 Then after that, we have to get back to the earth. 110 00:08:13,130 --> 00:08:20,650 And unfortunately, we had to make two trips around the sun 111 00:08:20,650 --> 00:08:22,120 to get back. 112 00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:25,650 And so the total trip time was more than three years. 113 00:08:25,650 --> 00:08:30,780 That did not play very well with those who are interested 114 00:08:30,780 --> 00:08:33,760 in getting some attention for the work that the 115 00:08:33,760 --> 00:08:37,080 laboratory was doing. 116 00:08:37,080 --> 00:08:41,440 But they did get some. 117 00:08:41,440 --> 00:08:43,089 This is a picture from the newspaper. 118 00:08:45,880 --> 00:08:53,120 And I'm on the right hand side, a younger version of me. 119 00:08:53,120 --> 00:08:58,990 And there's Hal Laning and Milt Trageser, all of whom 120 00:08:58,990 --> 00:09:03,610 were involved in this program. 121 00:09:03,610 --> 00:09:09,070 And it said, this project may solve the 122 00:09:09,070 --> 00:09:12,040 life on Mars mystery. 123 00:09:12,040 --> 00:09:14,260 But it didn't. 124 00:09:14,260 --> 00:09:18,670 In fact, it did do a lot of things. 125 00:09:18,670 --> 00:09:22,050 But it never flew. 126 00:09:22,050 --> 00:09:26,610 The Mars probe involved always a three year round trip to 127 00:09:26,610 --> 00:09:29,290 photograph the planet. 128 00:09:29,290 --> 00:09:33,670 And we had to have onboard, self-contained navigation. 129 00:09:33,670 --> 00:09:39,400 For three years, this little vehicle was going to be 130 00:09:39,400 --> 00:09:43,080 cruising and making measurements to determine 131 00:09:43,080 --> 00:09:47,320 where it was and when to make velocity corrections, all done 132 00:09:47,320 --> 00:09:49,230 on board the spacecraft -- 133 00:09:49,230 --> 00:09:52,590 unheard of at that time. 134 00:09:52,590 --> 00:09:55,780 And after the three-year trip, it would splash down in the 135 00:09:55,780 --> 00:09:57,360 Gulf of Mexico. 136 00:09:57,360 --> 00:10:04,520 And this little model, which is a good size, is hanging in 137 00:10:04,520 --> 00:10:05,770 the Draper Laboratory. 138 00:10:08,240 --> 00:10:10,950 I used to know where it was, but then they moved it. 139 00:10:10,950 --> 00:10:13,320 But they said, it's somewhere in the building. 140 00:10:13,320 --> 00:10:16,620 So if you want to take a look at it, and you can get into 141 00:10:16,620 --> 00:10:23,370 the Draper Lab building, then you can see this. 142 00:10:23,370 --> 00:10:29,880 The big red, that's the entry vehicle, which was, in it was 143 00:10:29,880 --> 00:10:37,900 the film of the picture that we took of Mars. 144 00:10:37,900 --> 00:10:42,750 The major problem was how to design a small computer and 145 00:10:42,750 --> 00:10:48,970 its memory in 1960 to survive a three year round trip to 146 00:10:48,970 --> 00:10:54,620 Mars, with no data uplink and no inflight service. 147 00:10:54,620 --> 00:10:57,430 That doesn't mean what you think. 148 00:10:57,430 --> 00:10:59,870 Inflight service means if something breaks, 149 00:10:59,870 --> 00:11:00,980 you can't fix it. 150 00:11:00,980 --> 00:11:04,320 It's got to be perfect. 151 00:11:04,320 --> 00:11:11,900 But then came 1961. 152 00:11:11,900 --> 00:11:14,290 Alan Shepard was ready to fly the 153 00:11:14,290 --> 00:11:18,350 Mercury-Redstone on May 5 of 1961. 154 00:11:18,350 --> 00:11:21,770 It was the first American in space, not the first human 155 00:11:21,770 --> 00:11:25,740 being in space, the first American. 156 00:11:25,740 --> 00:11:30,450 The Russians had already capitalized on their Sputnik, 157 00:11:30,450 --> 00:11:36,160 and they had a man in space somewhat before we did. 158 00:11:36,160 --> 00:11:44,215 And you look at the picture, there's the blockhouse. 159 00:11:44,215 --> 00:11:48,010 It looks like about the size of a garage. 160 00:11:48,010 --> 00:11:55,280 And the space vehicle, not very big, all it was going to 161 00:11:55,280 --> 00:12:01,050 do was just fly a 20-minute flight and land in the ocean 162 00:12:01,050 --> 00:12:03,190 and be fished out. 163 00:12:03,190 --> 00:12:07,620 That was what we were going to do, when in fact, the Russians 164 00:12:07,620 --> 00:12:10,595 were already putting men in orbit. 165 00:12:13,490 --> 00:12:29,080 Now, I will never be as amazed that three weeks after Alan 166 00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:35,990 Shepard made his flight, that John F. Kennedy said that he 167 00:12:35,990 --> 00:12:38,600 believed that this nation should commit itself to 168 00:12:38,600 --> 00:12:42,180 achieve the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a 169 00:12:42,180 --> 00:12:45,175 man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth. 170 00:12:45,175 --> 00:12:50,990 Now, that's pretty gutsy to do when your only success is a 171 00:12:50,990 --> 00:12:55,240 20-minute splashdown in the Atlantic with one 172 00:12:55,240 --> 00:12:56,880 person at the helm. 173 00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:06,940 Now, 1961, let's look at some of the other things. 174 00:13:06,940 --> 00:13:12,400 Alan Shepard's flight on May 5; May 25, President Kennedy's 175 00:13:12,400 --> 00:13:15,880 message to the Congress and to the world. 176 00:13:15,880 --> 00:13:22,410 And then on August 10, MIT is awarded the first NASA Prime 177 00:13:22,410 --> 00:13:23,910 Contract for Apollo. 178 00:13:23,910 --> 00:13:27,180 NASA had just barely been created. 179 00:13:27,180 --> 00:13:31,420 And in response to President Kennedy's "we're going to go 180 00:13:31,420 --> 00:13:38,540 to the moon," they gave the job to MIT. 181 00:13:42,850 --> 00:13:47,680 That's pretty amazing when you think about it. 182 00:13:47,680 --> 00:13:53,740 And we'll say a word more about that in a minute. 183 00:13:53,740 --> 00:14:01,240 The Mars probe never flew, but the onboard computer did 184 00:14:01,240 --> 00:14:05,310 evolve into becoming the Apollo guidance computer. 185 00:14:05,310 --> 00:14:08,710 There was a computer that we had to have in our little 186 00:14:08,710 --> 00:14:13,790 space probe, and that did evolve into the guidance 187 00:14:13,790 --> 00:14:19,430 computer, the Apollo onboard computer, 188 00:14:19,430 --> 00:14:23,330 for the lunar mission. 189 00:14:23,330 --> 00:14:25,660 We moved into better quarters. 190 00:14:25,660 --> 00:14:30,800 This is the home of the Apollo project from 1962 on. 191 00:14:30,800 --> 00:14:33,310 That building no longer exists. 192 00:14:33,310 --> 00:14:40,200 It was originally a storage warehouse for underwear. 193 00:14:40,200 --> 00:14:51,360 And we took over the whole building, refurbished it, and 194 00:14:51,360 --> 00:14:56,670 my office was on the other side of the building. 195 00:14:56,670 --> 00:15:01,680 And it was on the corner. 196 00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:03,160 It was a nice office. 197 00:15:03,160 --> 00:15:05,950 Here's what the place looks like today. 198 00:15:08,700 --> 00:15:14,780 This is the luxury waterfront condominiums that they made 199 00:15:14,780 --> 00:15:19,350 long after the space program ended. 200 00:15:19,350 --> 00:15:24,350 And the underwear factory or underwear warehouse was 201 00:15:24,350 --> 00:15:29,900 replaced by these condominiums. 202 00:15:29,900 --> 00:15:34,080 Now, MIT was chosen for the GN&C. And quite a big question 203 00:15:34,080 --> 00:15:42,620 is "Why?" Well, Jim Webb, who was the administrator of NASA, 204 00:15:42,620 --> 00:15:44,880 knew Doc Draper. 205 00:15:44,880 --> 00:15:49,730 And this is Doc's version of what happened. 206 00:15:49,730 --> 00:15:54,620 Jim Webb called Doc Draper on the telephone, says, "Doc," he 207 00:15:54,620 --> 00:15:57,730 says, "Can you develop the guidance and navigation system 208 00:15:57,730 --> 00:16:00,530 for Apollo?" 209 00:16:00,530 --> 00:16:03,000 What would you say if you were Doc Draper. 210 00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:05,010 You would say, "Yes, of course. 211 00:16:05,010 --> 00:16:09,330 We'll do that." "When will it be ready?" "Well, when you 212 00:16:09,330 --> 00:16:13,650 need it." (Laughter) That's a good schedule. 213 00:16:13,650 --> 00:16:16,840 "And how do I know it will work?" And you say, "I will go 214 00:16:16,840 --> 00:16:21,210 along and operate it for you." 215 00:16:21,210 --> 00:16:26,050 Now that's the story that Doc always told. 216 00:16:26,050 --> 00:16:29,710 And I believe it, because he did know Jim Webb. 217 00:16:29,710 --> 00:16:33,300 Jim Webb was not a scientist. Jim Webb was good at getting 218 00:16:33,300 --> 00:16:35,050 money out of Congress. 219 00:16:35,050 --> 00:16:36,030 He was a lawyer. 220 00:16:36,030 --> 00:16:41,630 And his job was to make sure that the Apollo program was 221 00:16:41,630 --> 00:16:44,230 adequately funded. 222 00:16:44,230 --> 00:16:54,530 Now, was it Doc Draper's phone call from Jim Webb, or was it 223 00:16:54,530 --> 00:16:55,480 Bob Chilton's memo? 224 00:16:55,480 --> 00:16:58,910 Bob Chilton worked for NASA all of his life. 225 00:16:58,910 --> 00:16:59,460 He's retired. 226 00:16:59,460 --> 00:17:07,240 He lives down in Texas, at Texas A&M. And I hear from him 227 00:17:07,240 --> 00:17:09,920 once a year. 228 00:17:09,920 --> 00:17:13,960 And here's what Bob Chilton did. 229 00:17:13,960 --> 00:17:17,390 He wrote this memo to the Chief of the Flight Systems 230 00:17:17,390 --> 00:17:21,406 Division in November 7, 1960. 231 00:17:21,406 --> 00:17:25,119 He said, "Development of the onboard capability to 232 00:17:25,119 --> 00:17:29,260 determine position and velocity by optical means is 233 00:17:29,260 --> 00:17:35,320 important to the principle of onboard command for Apollo. 234 00:17:35,320 --> 00:17:40,060 The Instrumentation Laboratory of MIT has shown a strong 235 00:17:40,060 --> 00:17:43,260 interest in the problem of self-contained navigation. 236 00:17:43,260 --> 00:17:47,500 The position and velocity determination schemes proposed 237 00:17:47,500 --> 00:17:50,940 in the reference report by Battin and Laning called A 238 00:17:50,940 --> 00:17:55,280 Recoverable Interplanetary Space Probe in 1959 are alike 239 00:17:55,280 --> 00:18:00,110 in principle to that desired for Apollo." 240 00:18:00,110 --> 00:18:02,310 At the time, Bob Chilton was the head of the Flight 241 00:18:02,310 --> 00:18:06,240 Dynamics Branch at Langley Field. 242 00:18:09,860 --> 00:18:15,350 Bob Chilton's memo, the memo was stamped Confidential. 243 00:18:15,350 --> 00:18:18,690 Everything was classified in those days, and Bob gave me 244 00:18:18,690 --> 00:18:23,180 his original carbon copy, which I still treasure. 245 00:18:23,180 --> 00:18:26,020 Here we are sending men to the moon, and we had not even 246 00:18:26,020 --> 00:18:31,450 invented a good copy machine. 247 00:18:31,450 --> 00:18:35,600 Why was onboard navigation a basic requirement? 248 00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:37,900 Well, one of the reasons would be that the Russians 249 00:18:37,900 --> 00:18:38,860 might not play fair. 250 00:18:38,860 --> 00:18:41,760 They might jam the communication links and we 251 00:18:41,760 --> 00:18:44,720 would not be able to communicate with our 252 00:18:44,720 --> 00:18:45,970 spacecraft. 253 00:18:49,550 --> 00:18:54,830 1961 was a long time ago. 254 00:18:54,830 --> 00:18:58,880 We had to use typewriters and carbon paper. 255 00:18:58,880 --> 00:19:02,340 Xerox had not been invented. 256 00:19:02,340 --> 00:19:04,910 You could watch TV, but not in color. 257 00:19:04,910 --> 00:19:06,870 There were just black and white TVs and 258 00:19:06,870 --> 00:19:09,620 not very good quality. 259 00:19:09,620 --> 00:19:13,220 You could do calculations using electromechanical 260 00:19:13,220 --> 00:19:17,440 machines, no personal computers or even pocket 261 00:19:17,440 --> 00:19:19,280 calculators. 262 00:19:19,280 --> 00:19:22,390 These things would cost about $800 to $1,000, and all the 263 00:19:22,390 --> 00:19:27,110 would do is add and subtract and divide. 264 00:19:27,110 --> 00:19:29,490 If you spent $500 more, you could get one 265 00:19:29,490 --> 00:19:31,720 that did square root. 266 00:19:31,720 --> 00:19:37,220 And that was a pretty amazing thing, because every day, just 267 00:19:37,220 --> 00:19:41,320 about, the repairman would be there to fix it, because it 268 00:19:41,320 --> 00:19:43,870 was such a complicated piece of equipment. 269 00:19:46,540 --> 00:19:49,940 When we'd go on business trips, no jets. 270 00:19:49,940 --> 00:19:52,690 We had propeller-driven aircraft. 271 00:19:52,690 --> 00:19:55,570 And the per diem rates were $12 a day. 272 00:19:55,570 --> 00:20:00,240 With that $12, I was supposed to pay for my hotel bill and 273 00:20:00,240 --> 00:20:04,160 buy three meals, and do it for $12 a day. 274 00:20:04,160 --> 00:20:08,020 And that was plenty good enough. 275 00:20:08,020 --> 00:20:14,370 In fact, if you just said, give me the $12, and then if 276 00:20:14,370 --> 00:20:17,330 you didn't spend it, you could keep the dollar or 277 00:20:17,330 --> 00:20:20,140 two which was left. 278 00:20:20,140 --> 00:20:24,370 Those were different days than they are today. 279 00:20:24,370 --> 00:20:29,130 Now let's look at, this came about only relatively 280 00:20:29,130 --> 00:20:37,080 recently, the numerology of 1961. 281 00:20:37,080 --> 00:20:38,350 It's an invertible number. 282 00:20:42,030 --> 00:20:50,140 That is, if you turn it upside-down, it's still 1961. 283 00:20:50,140 --> 00:20:58,692 Earlier invertible years, 1001, 1111, 1691, 1881. 284 00:20:58,692 --> 00:21:03,235 When will the next invertible year take place? 285 00:21:06,170 --> 00:21:08,190 6009. 286 00:21:08,190 --> 00:21:13,460 You've got a long wait for the next invertible year. 287 00:21:13,460 --> 00:21:15,160 OK, that's one thing. 288 00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:16,410 But there's more. 289 00:21:19,160 --> 00:21:22,210 President Kennedy's Special Message to 290 00:21:22,210 --> 00:21:25,830 Congress was 5/25/61. 291 00:21:25,830 --> 00:21:31,590 5 plus 25 plus 6 plus 1 is 37, which is a prime factor of 292 00:21:31,590 --> 00:21:36,540 1961, which is only interesting. 293 00:21:36,540 --> 00:21:48,090 But if you take the prime factor, which is 37, there's 294 00:21:48,090 --> 00:21:51,130 only one other prime factor, and that's 53. 295 00:21:51,130 --> 00:21:55,820 So 53 times 37 is 1961. 296 00:21:55,820 --> 00:22:01,620 If you take 53, and you get the month of August, 5 plus 3 297 00:22:01,620 --> 00:22:08,550 is 8, and the 10th, 3 plus 7 is 10, and it's all written 298 00:22:08,550 --> 00:22:15,590 there forever that MIT would get the Apollo contract on 299 00:22:15,590 --> 00:22:19,930 August 10 of 1961. 300 00:22:19,930 --> 00:22:21,980 Isn't that-- that's pretty amazing. 301 00:22:21,980 --> 00:22:25,615 I was going to give a talk on Apollo. 302 00:22:25,615 --> 00:22:27,810 And I had it in the afternoon. 303 00:22:27,810 --> 00:22:33,540 And I was fiddling around, and I came up with this. 304 00:22:33,540 --> 00:22:35,560 And I was really impressed. 305 00:22:35,560 --> 00:22:42,640 And so were the audiences when they realized that this was, 306 00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:46,030 as I pointed out, this is not an accident. 307 00:22:46,030 --> 00:22:50,880 This is the way it was all planned ahead of time. 308 00:22:50,880 --> 00:22:55,690 Now also, Apollo is Greek mythology. 309 00:22:55,690 --> 00:23:01,150 Apollo is America's Program for Orbital and Lunar Landing 310 00:23:01,150 --> 00:23:04,550 Operations, so even the Greeks knew that we were 311 00:23:04,550 --> 00:23:07,076 going to do the job. 312 00:23:09,980 --> 00:23:12,890 1961 was a vintage year. 313 00:23:12,890 --> 00:23:14,866 A lot of things happened then. 314 00:23:14,866 --> 00:23:16,910 There they are. 315 00:23:16,910 --> 00:23:23,000 In January 26, the first multiple fly-by orbit of the 316 00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:29,250 planets was determined, by going from 317 00:23:29,250 --> 00:23:36,805 Earth to Mars via Venus. 318 00:23:39,530 --> 00:23:49,190 You go from Earth to Venus to Mars and back to Earth, all in 319 00:23:49,190 --> 00:23:50,900 one launch. 320 00:23:50,900 --> 00:24:00,770 And that was discovered by me in January 26 of 1961. 321 00:24:00,770 --> 00:24:06,510 I have to emphasize that that date is very important. 322 00:24:06,510 --> 00:24:16,380 Because there was a lawsuit by somebody whose name I must not 323 00:24:16,380 --> 00:24:22,480 mention, who brought suit against me, because he said he 324 00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:25,280 did it first. But he didn't really. 325 00:24:28,250 --> 00:24:32,820 In the spring of that year, the first offering, that is 326 00:24:32,820 --> 00:24:35,990 the first class in Astronautical Guidance, is 327 00:24:35,990 --> 00:24:39,560 what my course used to be called until it was changed to 328 00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:40,810 Astrodynamics. 329 00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:48,130 On April 12, Yuri Gagarin flew three orbits of the earth. 330 00:24:48,130 --> 00:24:54,640 And then to respond to that, on May 5, Alan Shepard did a 331 00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:56,800 quarter-orbit flight. 332 00:24:56,800 --> 00:25:02,250 And then, three weeks later, President Kennedy commits us 333 00:25:02,250 --> 00:25:04,410 to going to the moon. 334 00:25:04,410 --> 00:25:14,030 And in August, Gherman Titov flies 16 orbits of the Earth. 335 00:25:14,030 --> 00:25:22,480 And MIT is awarded the first Apollo contract. 336 00:25:26,410 --> 00:25:31,970 In October 13, the American Rocket Society had a meeting, 337 00:25:31,970 --> 00:25:34,650 because Kennedy said he wanted to know what 338 00:25:34,650 --> 00:25:36,230 progress had been made. 339 00:25:36,230 --> 00:25:39,415 And so we had a spaceflight report to the nation of all 340 00:25:39,415 --> 00:25:42,210 the stuff that we were doing. 341 00:25:42,210 --> 00:25:49,230 Later, on November 21, Draper, who had said to Jim Webb that 342 00:25:49,230 --> 00:25:52,400 yes, he would make sure it worked, because he'd fly it, 343 00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:57,240 he volunteered formally to be an astronaut. 344 00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:04,200 And then, I thought of this much later, December 23 was 345 00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:06,290 Christina Shue's [?] 346 00:26:06,290 --> 00:26:08,520 100th birthday. 347 00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:12,610 Who in the world was Christina Shue [?] ? 348 00:26:12,610 --> 00:26:13,860 My grandmother. 349 00:26:18,590 --> 00:26:21,680 So in 1961, a lot of things happened. 350 00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:27,860 Here is the first round trip to Venus. 351 00:26:27,860 --> 00:26:30,680 We were a little discouraged by taking three years to get 352 00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:32,230 to Mars and back home. 353 00:26:32,230 --> 00:26:36,610 So we said, maybe we could go to Venus and 354 00:26:36,610 --> 00:26:38,990 return in less time. 355 00:26:38,990 --> 00:26:41,500 And as a matter of fact, you can. 356 00:26:41,500 --> 00:26:49,090 If you see the launch, and you go past Venus, and then you're 357 00:26:49,090 --> 00:26:49,980 coming back to Earth. 358 00:26:49,980 --> 00:26:54,190 But look, you're almost out to the Martian border. 359 00:26:54,190 --> 00:26:56,870 And wouldn't it be nice if Mars were there? 360 00:26:56,870 --> 00:27:02,780 And that was what we did. 361 00:27:02,780 --> 00:27:05,460 We had a Venus fly-by. 362 00:27:05,460 --> 00:27:10,320 And then following that is the return to Earth. 363 00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:14,160 And it is all done in just a little over a year. 364 00:27:14,160 --> 00:27:20,430 And we visit two planets for the price of one, first to 365 00:27:20,430 --> 00:27:24,820 Venus and then to Mars, and then back to Earth. 366 00:27:24,820 --> 00:27:28,150 And this was the very first one of these 367 00:27:28,150 --> 00:27:30,650 that was ever done. 368 00:27:30,650 --> 00:27:37,960 We do that all the time today, using fly-bys of planets to 369 00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:42,390 change the velocity to get to another location to accomplish 370 00:27:42,390 --> 00:27:44,610 something else. 371 00:27:44,610 --> 00:27:51,530 But this was the first time it was ever done on a computer. 372 00:27:55,380 --> 00:27:59,450 Now saying that the first offering of astronautical 373 00:27:59,450 --> 00:28:01,130 guidance, it's kind of interesting. 374 00:28:01,130 --> 00:28:05,830 Because there are the people who took that course, Buzz 375 00:28:05,830 --> 00:28:16,335 Aldrin, who flew in 1961, in Apollo 11, and then Dave 376 00:28:16,335 --> 00:28:23,630 Scott, who flew Apollo 15, in 1962, and Ed Mitchell, who was 377 00:28:23,630 --> 00:28:28,160 on Apollo 14 in 1963. 378 00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:31,820 Each of these gentlemen, and they're all still alive and 379 00:28:31,820 --> 00:28:36,720 well, they walked on the moon. 380 00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:38,655 And they took astronautical guidance. 381 00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:59,200 Apollo 14, I always thought that Ed Mitchell, it had more 382 00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:03,320 people watching that launch than any time in the past or 383 00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:04,320 the future. 384 00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:05,570 Why? 385 00:29:08,620 --> 00:29:10,050 Why? 386 00:29:10,050 --> 00:29:12,860 It was Apollo 14. 387 00:29:12,860 --> 00:29:16,200 What was the flight before that? 388 00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:17,300 Apollo 13. 389 00:29:17,300 --> 00:29:19,770 And that was pretty serious. 390 00:29:19,770 --> 00:29:22,910 We almost didn't get them home. 391 00:29:22,910 --> 00:29:28,850 And then to be a crew for the next flight, I think, took a 392 00:29:28,850 --> 00:29:33,960 little gutsy. 393 00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:36,630 Here's the textbook for the graduate course in 394 00:29:36,630 --> 00:29:40,040 astronautical guidance. 395 00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:43,600 The book is Astronautical Guidance. 396 00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:49,870 The diagram, if you take my course, you'll find out how to 397 00:29:49,870 --> 00:29:54,710 navigate in space by making measurements of angles between 398 00:29:54,710 --> 00:29:57,080 stars and near bodies. 399 00:29:57,080 --> 00:30:03,240 And so that little diagram was on the flyleaf, and was also 400 00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:10,490 on the inside of the book in color. 401 00:30:10,490 --> 00:30:17,430 Now when the book came out, we were having a heavy load of 402 00:30:17,430 --> 00:30:19,290 important visitors. 403 00:30:19,290 --> 00:30:24,600 And Doc, he took my book, and he said, "Battin," he says, "I 404 00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:26,630 want you to buy a lot of these. 405 00:30:26,630 --> 00:30:28,520 And I want you to autograph them. 406 00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:33,390 We're going to have important people here." And sure enough, 407 00:30:33,390 --> 00:30:35,540 let's see who the important people are. 408 00:30:35,540 --> 00:30:37,550 Well, there's Doc. 409 00:30:37,550 --> 00:30:38,880 And then there's Kurt Debus. 410 00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:45,120 He was the head of the Space Center in Florida. 411 00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:50,600 Wernher von Braun needs no introduction. 412 00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:57,740 Bob Gilruth, who was the head of the NASA team in Texas, and 413 00:30:57,740 --> 00:31:01,670 then me, looking smug. 414 00:31:01,670 --> 00:31:04,950 And everybody, you see, has got a copy of the book in 415 00:31:04,950 --> 00:31:06,100 front of them. 416 00:31:06,100 --> 00:31:09,830 And I was pretty excited about that. 417 00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:16,900 There was an unauthorized version of the book, 418 00:31:16,900 --> 00:31:21,090 Astronautical Guidance, in Russian. 419 00:31:21,090 --> 00:31:27,600 And this was about four years later. 420 00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:29,470 And everything is in Russian. 421 00:31:33,020 --> 00:31:36,252 There is Battin in Russian. 422 00:31:36,252 --> 00:31:41,520 And the diagram is exactly the same diagram 423 00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:43,030 that appeared on-- 424 00:31:43,030 --> 00:31:47,950 but it's an unauthorized, that is, they didn't ask permission 425 00:31:47,950 --> 00:31:50,870 to do this or give us any royalties. 426 00:31:50,870 --> 00:31:56,890 But they did give us an all expenses paid, round trip 427 00:31:56,890 --> 00:32:06,990 visit to Moscow and Leningrad and Tbilisi after the Apollo 428 00:32:06,990 --> 00:32:11,940 11 landing. 429 00:32:11,940 --> 00:32:18,120 MIT awarded the first Apollo contract, and 430 00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:20,690 here was the team. 431 00:32:20,690 --> 00:32:24,220 We have Jim Webb, the one in the center. 432 00:32:26,750 --> 00:32:30,750 And to the left is Hugh Dryden. 433 00:32:30,750 --> 00:32:33,970 He was the deputy administrator, but he passed 434 00:32:33,970 --> 00:32:37,690 away in December of 1965. 435 00:32:37,690 --> 00:32:43,460 And then there's Bob Seamans, the associate administrator. 436 00:32:43,460 --> 00:32:49,780 He was promoted to deputy administrator. 437 00:32:49,780 --> 00:32:55,030 And Bob Seamans, as you are well aware, passed away. 438 00:32:55,030 --> 00:32:59,230 I was very happy that when I give this talk at this time 439 00:32:59,230 --> 00:33:02,490 last year, Bob Seamans came. 440 00:33:02,490 --> 00:33:03,900 He had not heard it before. 441 00:33:03,900 --> 00:33:05,650 But he came and listened. 442 00:33:05,650 --> 00:33:09,880 And I was so pleased that he was there. 443 00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:14,530 But he passed away shortly thereafter. 444 00:33:22,620 --> 00:33:24,160 MIT was chosen. 445 00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:24,590 Why? 446 00:33:24,590 --> 00:33:30,390 Well, Bob Seaman's book, Aiming at Targets, says, it 447 00:33:30,390 --> 00:33:31,960 doesn't give you much information. 448 00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:34,390 It just says, "When the decision was made to go to the 449 00:33:34,390 --> 00:33:37,340 moon, the Draper Lab got the contract for the navigation 450 00:33:37,340 --> 00:33:40,140 system." 451 00:33:40,140 --> 00:33:46,350 He really knew why, but he didn't want to put in print. 452 00:33:46,350 --> 00:33:51,160 Because after all, he was from MIT Instrumentation 453 00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,330 Laboratory. 454 00:33:53,330 --> 00:33:55,510 Doc headed the laboratory. 455 00:33:55,510 --> 00:34:00,180 And then all of a sudden, we get the job for 456 00:34:00,180 --> 00:34:03,770 the GN&C for Apollo. 457 00:34:03,770 --> 00:34:05,370 But we deserved it. 458 00:34:05,370 --> 00:34:07,970 And we performed well. 459 00:34:07,970 --> 00:34:15,260 So was it Doc Draper's phone call, or was it 460 00:34:15,260 --> 00:34:16,510 Bob Chilton's memo? 461 00:34:20,170 --> 00:34:21,724 I guess I got this in there twice. 462 00:34:21,724 --> 00:34:22,974 I shouldn't. 463 00:34:26,630 --> 00:34:31,750 I have to do a little surgery on this. 464 00:34:31,750 --> 00:34:33,650 Doc Draper volunteers to be an astronaut. 465 00:34:33,650 --> 00:34:34,699 He really did. 466 00:34:34,699 --> 00:34:37,260 And he had a letter. 467 00:34:37,260 --> 00:34:38,480 This is part of his letter. 468 00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:44,320 "I would like formally to volunteer as a crew member on 469 00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:47,560 the Apollo mission to the moon, and also for whatever 470 00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:50,520 sub-orbital and orbital flights that may be made in 471 00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:52,820 preparation for this lunar trip. 472 00:34:52,820 --> 00:34:57,860 I realize that my age of 60 years is a negative factor in 473 00:34:57,860 --> 00:35:01,180 considering my request, but General Flickinger tells me 474 00:35:01,180 --> 00:35:06,130 that this is no sure bar to my selection as a crew member." 475 00:35:06,130 --> 00:35:15,690 And we had a system, a real system, put on the roof of one 476 00:35:15,690 --> 00:35:23,020 of the buildings on the river, where you could practice 477 00:35:23,020 --> 00:35:24,170 navigating. 478 00:35:24,170 --> 00:35:28,350 And there's Doc Draper making a navigational fix. 479 00:35:28,350 --> 00:35:31,510 And you can recognize the Boston skyline, or what the 480 00:35:31,510 --> 00:35:34,410 Boston skyline looked like in those days. 481 00:35:34,410 --> 00:35:37,180 Some buildings are missing. 482 00:35:37,180 --> 00:35:44,170 And you could actually make measurements, and the computer 483 00:35:44,170 --> 00:35:48,100 would calculate where it was on the basis of that. 484 00:35:48,100 --> 00:35:58,140 And the result was always the particular spot on the roof of 485 00:35:58,140 --> 00:36:01,480 the building, even though you could start off with very bad 486 00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:06,160 guesses of where you were. 487 00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:10,740 And then by utilizing the navigation algorithm, you 488 00:36:10,740 --> 00:36:12,815 could to get a navigation fix. 489 00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:19,580 The guidance navigation laboratory system, you could 490 00:36:19,580 --> 00:36:25,710 see that today, if you get somebody to take you through 491 00:36:25,710 --> 00:36:26,960 the Draper Lab. 492 00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:34,480 This is actual-- 493 00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:35,240 it's not a mock up. 494 00:36:35,240 --> 00:36:37,280 It's really the equipment. 495 00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:42,800 And you have the means of communicating with the 496 00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:46,220 computer on the right, that was the DSKY, 497 00:36:46,220 --> 00:36:47,670 the display and keyboard. 498 00:36:47,670 --> 00:36:50,440 where you could get information, and you could 499 00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:59,280 also call up different things that you 500 00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:02,300 wanted to do in flight. 501 00:37:02,300 --> 00:37:16,350 For navigation purposes, we had a scanning telescope and a 502 00:37:16,350 --> 00:37:21,200 good sextant to make these measurements. 503 00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:28,770 You could get a view of the stars and the planets through 504 00:37:28,770 --> 00:37:36,760 the sextant and then make the actual measurements. 505 00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:40,360 You'd try to line them up, line up these two images, 506 00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:43,540 press a button to get information to the computer. 507 00:37:43,540 --> 00:38:00,950 In fact, what we have here does not show behind, where 508 00:38:00,950 --> 00:38:07,280 the ball for getting information with respect to 509 00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:13,860 attitude and velocity, all done on the back side of the-- 510 00:38:13,860 --> 00:38:18,840 but this is the front side, is this what the astronauts saw 511 00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:25,320 and used in their flights. 512 00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:29,390 There's the Apollo guidance computer. 513 00:38:29,390 --> 00:38:36,980 The fact that it's approximately one cubic foot, 514 00:38:36,980 --> 00:38:40,270 it's a really interesting story. 515 00:38:40,270 --> 00:38:50,560 When the spacecraft contractor was chosen, you got a phone 516 00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:53,030 call from them, saying, "Oh, I understand that you're going 517 00:38:53,030 --> 00:38:54,650 to have a computer on board. 518 00:38:54,650 --> 00:38:57,140 How big is it?" 519 00:38:57,140 --> 00:39:00,420 Well, we had no idea. 520 00:39:00,420 --> 00:39:03,500 All we could see was all this equipment 521 00:39:03,500 --> 00:39:04,900 that was on the wall. 522 00:39:04,900 --> 00:39:07,480 And somehow or other, we were going to have to package this 523 00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:10,570 down to something that would fit in the spacecraft. 524 00:39:10,570 --> 00:39:17,045 So they said, "Well, we've got to give him a number." And so 525 00:39:17,045 --> 00:39:21,470 I said, "Well, just tell him it's a cubic foot." 526 00:39:21,470 --> 00:39:23,140 And it was. 527 00:39:23,140 --> 00:39:24,840 We were able to squeeze it. 528 00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:31,560 You couldn't make it two cubic feet, because that's all they 529 00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:34,360 had room for, planned for. 530 00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:40,270 It was a computer of that size. 531 00:39:40,270 --> 00:39:45,290 And it weighed about 70 pounds, consumed 55 watts, 532 00:39:45,290 --> 00:39:48,090 which, that's pretty good. 533 00:39:48,090 --> 00:39:54,580 And then this up close is the display and keyboard. 534 00:39:54,580 --> 00:39:58,840 The core rope memory was a-- 535 00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:02,350 we're not going to spend much time dwelling on it. 536 00:40:02,350 --> 00:40:09,350 But it was an invention of Hal Laning, primarily Hal and 537 00:40:09,350 --> 00:40:16,580 others, that you could have a memory system which you would 538 00:40:16,580 --> 00:40:23,930 wire in place, so that if you lost electricity, you wouldn't 539 00:40:23,930 --> 00:40:25,820 lose your memory. 540 00:40:25,820 --> 00:40:29,760 And there is the way it was done. 541 00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:32,200 Each core would store a word. 542 00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:36,200 In fact, we got it down to where a single core could 543 00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:41,940 store 12 words, and each word was 16 bits or 2 bytes. 544 00:40:41,940 --> 00:40:46,470 And to read, to get information out, all you have 545 00:40:46,470 --> 00:40:49,560 to do was select the core and switch it. 546 00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:51,650 And then all of the sense wires that went through the 547 00:40:51,650 --> 00:40:54,850 core would produce 1s, and those that did not go through 548 00:40:54,850 --> 00:40:57,150 the core would produce 0s. 549 00:40:57,150 --> 00:41:01,880 And lo and behold, this was our system. 550 00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:04,435 The trouble is that you had to make these things. 551 00:41:04,435 --> 00:41:06,080 You had to manufacture them. 552 00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:08,650 And after you've made it, and if there was a mistake, you 553 00:41:08,650 --> 00:41:11,420 couldn't change it. 554 00:41:11,420 --> 00:41:15,680 Here's the speed in kilobytes. 555 00:41:18,250 --> 00:41:23,240 For our Mars probe, it had eight read only memory 556 00:41:23,240 --> 00:41:30,870 kilobytes, and change, this would be Random Access Memory, 557 00:41:30,870 --> 00:41:35,230 is a half of a kilobyte. 558 00:41:35,230 --> 00:41:44,130 The Apollo Guidance Computer had 74 ROMs and 4 read and 559 00:41:44,130 --> 00:41:48,550 write memory, and it was actually a little slower in 560 00:41:48,550 --> 00:41:52,180 speed than the Mars probe. 561 00:41:52,180 --> 00:41:58,940 Now today, the kind of memory that we're talking about, you 562 00:41:58,940 --> 00:42:01,520 can carry around in your pocket. 563 00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:06,120 In fact, I do have it in my pocket for this talk. 564 00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:14,005 And it's just absolutely amazing that first of all, 565 00:42:14,005 --> 00:42:16,410 that they had the idea that this was the way to do it, 566 00:42:16,410 --> 00:42:24,890 because in Apollo 12, the spacecraft was struck by 567 00:42:24,890 --> 00:42:26,000 lightning on the way up. 568 00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:31,210 And all of the read and write memory vanished. 569 00:42:31,210 --> 00:42:33,580 They had to put that back in by hand. 570 00:42:33,580 --> 00:42:35,680 But the read-only memory was fine. 571 00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:42,030 There was no trouble with it whatsoever. 572 00:42:42,030 --> 00:42:46,190 Here's a photograph of the core rope memory up close. 573 00:42:46,190 --> 00:42:51,010 And how would you manufacture something like that? 574 00:42:51,010 --> 00:42:58,010 Well, we used the LOL method, the Little Old Lady method, 575 00:42:58,010 --> 00:43:01,480 which I'll show you in a second. 576 00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:04,350 The computers and the memory were manufactured by Raytheon. 577 00:43:04,350 --> 00:43:06,670 The flight software was written and tested at the 578 00:43:06,670 --> 00:43:07,860 Instrumentation Laboratory. 579 00:43:07,860 --> 00:43:12,100 The core ropes required six weeks to build, and you 580 00:43:12,100 --> 00:43:14,510 couldn't make any last-minute changes. 581 00:43:14,510 --> 00:43:19,120 And there's one of the women who's wiring this thing. 582 00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:32,130 It was set up to be like a weaving machine that the 583 00:43:32,130 --> 00:43:34,540 computer would tell you where you're supposed to 584 00:43:34,540 --> 00:43:36,060 put the next wire. 585 00:43:36,060 --> 00:43:39,990 In fact, it would set it up for you so that you could put 586 00:43:39,990 --> 00:43:42,410 the wire through the right core. 587 00:43:42,410 --> 00:43:46,030 And all this was done at Raytheon. 588 00:43:46,030 --> 00:43:51,090 And it must have been very tedious for these women to do 589 00:43:51,090 --> 00:43:53,930 that kind of work. 590 00:43:53,930 --> 00:43:57,190 But they were always so proud when the astronauts 591 00:43:57,190 --> 00:43:58,080 would come and visit. 592 00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:02,070 Oh, it gave them the feeling that we can't screw up. 593 00:44:02,070 --> 00:44:05,330 We have to do this right, because we just met the men 594 00:44:05,330 --> 00:44:08,000 whose whole lives depend upon. 595 00:44:12,230 --> 00:44:13,520 How many computers? 596 00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:19,060 Well, we wound up with one for the Command Module and one for 597 00:44:19,060 --> 00:44:21,320 the Lunar Module. 598 00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:24,210 And there would be no inflight repair. 599 00:44:24,210 --> 00:44:26,770 There would be no built-in redundancy. 600 00:44:26,770 --> 00:44:31,590 That is, if one of the circuits fails, that's it. 601 00:44:31,590 --> 00:44:34,670 There would be no uplink from the ground. 602 00:44:34,670 --> 00:44:39,160 And there were many possible single-point failures, but 603 00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:41,100 none of them ever happened. 604 00:44:41,100 --> 00:44:45,510 The quality control people couldn't calculate the mean 605 00:44:45,510 --> 00:44:50,560 time between failures, because they never had any failure of 606 00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:52,460 the AGC at all. 607 00:44:56,570 --> 00:45:02,665 Software, the early NASA manned flights. 608 00:45:06,260 --> 00:45:14,820 The first one was Mercury flight. 609 00:45:14,820 --> 00:45:16,640 There were 6 Mercury flights. 610 00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:20,850 And there were 10 Gemini flights. 611 00:45:20,850 --> 00:45:22,810 The first one was May 5. 612 00:45:22,810 --> 00:45:26,440 We've already seen Shepard's. 613 00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:32,900 And the last one of the Mercury group was May in 1963. 614 00:45:32,900 --> 00:45:35,180 Then there were Gemini flights, where there were two 615 00:45:35,180 --> 00:45:38,940 astronauts in a capsule, rather than just one. 616 00:45:38,940 --> 00:45:47,400 And there were 10 of those, from '65 to '66. 617 00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:51,790 George Mueller was the Associate Administrator for 618 00:45:51,790 --> 00:45:54,750 Manned Spaceflight. 619 00:45:54,750 --> 00:45:58,620 And he was a NASA person. 620 00:45:58,620 --> 00:46:06,160 And he was very much concerned with the computer software. 621 00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:15,040 In fact, he was in charge of the software for the Mariner 1 622 00:46:15,040 --> 00:46:19,800 spacecraft to Venus, which was launched in 1962. 623 00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:22,280 And it went off course due to a software error. 624 00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:24,670 There was a missing minus sign in the code. 625 00:46:24,670 --> 00:46:28,620 He had this minus sign framed and hanging in his office. 626 00:46:28,620 --> 00:46:31,820 Do not take for granted. 627 00:46:31,820 --> 00:46:35,780 That you've got to check everything to make sure that 628 00:46:35,780 --> 00:46:37,030 it's going to work. 629 00:46:40,350 --> 00:46:43,190 The astronauts used to come and visit us. 630 00:46:43,190 --> 00:46:47,295 And in the fall of 1966, we had six astronauts. 631 00:46:47,295 --> 00:46:49,740 There were all sitting down there in the front row. 632 00:46:49,740 --> 00:46:53,160 And we had them autograph these. 633 00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:57,140 And then the people in the back were the ones that were 634 00:46:57,140 --> 00:46:59,170 working on the job. 635 00:46:59,170 --> 00:47:00,650 There is me. 636 00:47:00,650 --> 00:47:05,410 And there is Dave Hoag, and there's a whole bunch of other 637 00:47:05,410 --> 00:47:08,900 people all there to be photographed with the 638 00:47:08,900 --> 00:47:11,210 astronauts. 639 00:47:11,210 --> 00:47:16,350 This is a very sad picture, because Virgil Grissom and 640 00:47:16,350 --> 00:47:19,455 Roger Chaffee and Ed White, who where in that picture, 641 00:47:19,455 --> 00:47:21,840 were in Apollo 1. 642 00:47:21,840 --> 00:47:25,350 What happened to Apollo 1? 643 00:47:25,350 --> 00:47:27,920 It burned up on the ground. 644 00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:33,320 And so those guys, next to them was Dave Scott, who was 645 00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:37,260 one of my students, and Jim McDivitt and Russell 646 00:47:37,260 --> 00:47:38,020 Schweickart. 647 00:47:38,020 --> 00:47:41,540 Russell Schweickart was an MIT student, but he 648 00:47:41,540 --> 00:47:43,480 didn't take my course. 649 00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:45,790 And they flew on Apollo 9. 650 00:47:45,790 --> 00:47:52,970 Apollo 9 was the first flight using the Lunar Module. 651 00:47:59,900 --> 00:48:01,150 Apollo 8. 652 00:48:02,900 --> 00:48:06,260 This was the round trip trajectory to the moon. 653 00:48:06,260 --> 00:48:16,270 And you notice you're going from Earth to moon, go around 654 00:48:16,270 --> 00:48:17,640 the moon and back. 655 00:48:17,640 --> 00:48:23,020 And of course, what you want to do is to go on an orbit 656 00:48:23,020 --> 00:48:27,030 which is going to arrive at the lunar orbit ahead of the 657 00:48:27,030 --> 00:48:33,740 moon, and then we'll go around and then be 658 00:48:33,740 --> 00:48:36,830 swept back to Earth. 659 00:48:36,830 --> 00:48:43,100 Instead, if you had gone behind the moon, then the 660 00:48:43,100 --> 00:48:46,820 energy exchange would have been such that you would go 661 00:48:46,820 --> 00:48:50,220 off into the solar system someplace. 662 00:48:50,220 --> 00:48:57,410 You had to do this just right in order to get on an orbit 663 00:48:57,410 --> 00:48:59,240 back to the Earth. 664 00:49:01,740 --> 00:49:04,010 This picture is also in my book. 665 00:49:04,010 --> 00:49:06,570 And you can look at it. 666 00:49:06,570 --> 00:49:12,290 And they made a big deal out of the fact that it is a 667 00:49:12,290 --> 00:49:15,140 figure eight. 668 00:49:15,140 --> 00:49:27,150 And Apollo 8 was the first manned flight 669 00:49:27,150 --> 00:49:29,420 away from the Earth. 670 00:49:29,420 --> 00:49:38,130 And so Apollo 8, which was the Christmas flight, you may 671 00:49:38,130 --> 00:49:41,550 remember that, maybe you don't know. 672 00:49:41,550 --> 00:49:42,450 You don't have to remember it. 673 00:49:42,450 --> 00:49:47,320 But it was the time when the astronauts were for the first 674 00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:49,710 time in orbit around the moon. 675 00:49:49,710 --> 00:50:01,110 And they were in this particular mission. 676 00:50:01,110 --> 00:50:03,680 Of course, you always worry about, what if the engine 677 00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:04,530 doesn't work. 678 00:50:04,530 --> 00:50:05,990 You're going to stay there forever. 679 00:50:05,990 --> 00:50:08,460 You're not going to come back to the Earth. 680 00:50:08,460 --> 00:50:11,610 There's nothing the ground could do to help you out. 681 00:50:11,610 --> 00:50:23,230 And this design for the Apollo 8 is really a Earth around the 682 00:50:23,230 --> 00:50:29,670 moon, just as the real mission showed. 683 00:50:29,670 --> 00:50:32,210 Here's the crew. 684 00:50:32,210 --> 00:50:34,670 Frank Borman was the commander. 685 00:50:34,670 --> 00:50:38,290 And Bill Landers was the Lunar Module pilot. 686 00:50:38,290 --> 00:50:43,240 Even though we didn't have a Lunar Module, 687 00:50:43,240 --> 00:50:48,070 they had work to do. 688 00:50:48,070 --> 00:50:52,150 And Jim Lovell was the Command Module pilot. 689 00:50:52,150 --> 00:50:55,130 And he was the one that did the navigation. 690 00:50:55,130 --> 00:51:03,500 He did all the measurements to do the orbit determination, 691 00:51:03,500 --> 00:51:12,940 the navigation, for the first time, on a flight to the moon. 692 00:51:12,940 --> 00:51:21,330 And what he had to do, this is the navigator measuring an 693 00:51:21,330 --> 00:51:24,280 angle between a star and a landmark. 694 00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:32,080 And you would put a mark in the computer, which would 695 00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:35,340 register the time and the direction of each of these, 696 00:51:35,340 --> 00:51:42,470 and then it would calculate the angle, the shaft angle and 697 00:51:42,470 --> 00:51:45,580 trunnion angle, or two angles. 698 00:51:45,580 --> 00:51:52,560 And you'd get one piece of information. 699 00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:56,050 But when you added all these different measurements 700 00:51:56,050 --> 00:52:02,010 together, separated in time and position, you were able to 701 00:52:02,010 --> 00:52:05,400 do a very credible job of navigating to the moon. 702 00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:12,120 As a matter of fact, it was so close that it was decided that 703 00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:14,550 we didn't need an update from the ground. 704 00:52:14,550 --> 00:52:18,720 In the rule book, it said, before you make any velocity 705 00:52:18,720 --> 00:52:24,460 change, you have to get your state vector information from 706 00:52:24,460 --> 00:52:25,950 the ground. 707 00:52:25,950 --> 00:52:31,750 And Chris Kraft said, he couldn't see any difference. 708 00:52:31,750 --> 00:52:37,790 The onboard computer and the ground were almost identical. 709 00:52:37,790 --> 00:52:41,410 But they did have to follow the rules and make the 710 00:52:41,410 --> 00:52:42,850 correction. 711 00:52:42,850 --> 00:52:46,290 And Jim Lovell navigated all the way back. 712 00:52:46,290 --> 00:52:50,770 So he was the very first person to ever navigate a 713 00:52:50,770 --> 00:52:56,730 spacecraft by making telescopic 714 00:52:56,730 --> 00:52:57,980 measurements on board. 715 00:53:01,660 --> 00:53:06,110 Jim Lovell, he trained at MIT using the 716 00:53:06,110 --> 00:53:09,580 Earth horizon simulator. 717 00:53:09,580 --> 00:53:10,860 He was calibrated. 718 00:53:10,860 --> 00:53:15,290 That is, he would tell you where he thought the horizon 719 00:53:15,290 --> 00:53:21,430 was, and it would be different than what the computer thought 720 00:53:21,430 --> 00:53:22,715 the horizon was. 721 00:53:22,715 --> 00:53:28,500 And so eventually, at least he was consistent. 722 00:53:28,500 --> 00:53:39,680 And so he had demonstrated that his consistency was such 723 00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:42,390 that we would calibrate him. 724 00:53:42,390 --> 00:53:45,700 That is, when he looked at the horizon, and there was a 725 00:53:45,700 --> 00:53:50,810 little difference, that that particular offset 726 00:53:50,810 --> 00:53:54,680 would be Jim Lovell. 727 00:53:54,680 --> 00:53:58,960 And other astronauts would have their own. 728 00:53:58,960 --> 00:54:02,250 And it says here that Jim was the first to demonstrate that 729 00:54:02,250 --> 00:54:04,840 man could navigate in space without 730 00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:06,310 assistance from the ground. 731 00:54:09,190 --> 00:54:11,240 He wrote a book called Lost Moon. 732 00:54:11,240 --> 00:54:17,200 This was the Apollo 13 book. 733 00:54:17,200 --> 00:54:23,890 And he was the Command Module navigator on Apollo 8. 734 00:54:23,890 --> 00:54:27,640 There he is when he was younger. 735 00:54:27,640 --> 00:54:32,200 And that's just kind of sad, because on Apollo 8 736 00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:35,050 navigational measurements, he said, "After leaving Earth 737 00:54:35,050 --> 00:54:40,770 orbit, the astronauts took a few rapturous sightings of the 738 00:54:40,770 --> 00:54:46,230 receding planet, and then turn their spacecraft around to fly 739 00:54:46,230 --> 00:54:53,570 in a proper, nose-forward attitude." That always, 740 00:54:53,570 --> 00:54:56,630 whenever I see that, it's sort of upsetting. 741 00:54:56,630 --> 00:54:59,490 We went to all kinds of trouble. 742 00:54:59,490 --> 00:55:02,180 And he was the navigator. 743 00:55:02,180 --> 00:55:07,130 And when he wrote the book, he didn't mention anything about 744 00:55:07,130 --> 00:55:08,170 how he did this. 745 00:55:08,170 --> 00:55:11,730 He just took some rapturous sightings of 746 00:55:11,730 --> 00:55:14,720 the receding planet. 747 00:55:14,720 --> 00:55:17,580 Oh, well. 748 00:55:17,580 --> 00:55:19,980 Here are the flights. 749 00:55:19,980 --> 00:55:22,570 Apollo 1 was destroyed by the fire. 750 00:55:22,570 --> 00:55:25,940 Then there was Apollo 7, which was to try it 751 00:55:25,940 --> 00:55:27,640 out in Earth orbit. 752 00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:30,120 Apollo 8 went to the moon. 753 00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:34,260 Apollo 9 was a flight for that the first time, the lunar 754 00:55:34,260 --> 00:55:38,610 module flew in Earth orbit. 755 00:55:38,610 --> 00:55:42,350 Apollo 10 was a dress rehearsal to fly to the moon. 756 00:55:42,350 --> 00:55:45,010 You do everything except land. 757 00:55:45,010 --> 00:55:48,540 And then Apollo 11, you land. 758 00:55:48,540 --> 00:55:51,850 Then there were a bunch of others, as you can see. 759 00:55:51,850 --> 00:55:57,405 12, 13 was, it took a while before they were ready, over a 760 00:55:57,405 --> 00:56:02,680 year and a half, to go from Apollo 13 to 14. 761 00:56:02,680 --> 00:56:05,410 And at the very end, they had Apollo 17. 762 00:56:05,410 --> 00:56:08,440 But there were 18, 19, and 20. 763 00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:09,990 The rockets were there. 764 00:56:09,990 --> 00:56:11,400 The spacecraft were there. 765 00:56:11,400 --> 00:56:13,730 They could have flown. 766 00:56:13,730 --> 00:56:17,870 But I think that probably the reason was that with all these 767 00:56:17,870 --> 00:56:22,070 successes, why don't we quit when we're ahead? 768 00:56:22,070 --> 00:56:25,070 And there's another reason why you might want to quit. 769 00:56:25,070 --> 00:56:29,315 And that is numerology, again, more numerology. 770 00:56:32,230 --> 00:56:36,480 1 plus 9 plus 6 plus 1 is 17. 771 00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:42,190 And Alan Shepard's flight was on 5/5/61, which is 17. 772 00:56:42,190 --> 00:56:47,930 So Apollo 17 was going to be the last flight to the moon, 773 00:56:47,930 --> 00:56:51,260 all set by the very beginning. 774 00:56:51,260 --> 00:56:55,510 But not only that, 17 is an important number. 775 00:56:55,510 --> 00:56:56,320 It's a Fermat number. 776 00:56:56,320 --> 00:56:59,480 It's a Fermat prime. 777 00:56:59,480 --> 00:57:03,670 Fermat numbers are 2 to the 2 to the, and so on up the line. 778 00:57:03,670 --> 00:57:08,580 And Fermat had suggested that all such 779 00:57:08,580 --> 00:57:11,640 numbers would be prime. 780 00:57:11,640 --> 00:57:16,070 And they're not. 781 00:57:16,070 --> 00:57:20,670 In fact, the only numbers which are known to be Fermat 782 00:57:20,670 --> 00:57:30,910 primes are the ones at the bottom 6, or 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 783 00:57:30,910 --> 00:57:37,950 are the only known primes, and F2, which is 2 to the 2 to the 784 00:57:37,950 --> 00:57:40,030 2 plus 1 is seventeen. 785 00:57:40,030 --> 00:57:46,080 And so it is one of the only known primes 786 00:57:46,080 --> 00:57:49,000 generated by this formula. 787 00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:54,557 So obviously, 17 had to be the last flight to the moon. 788 00:57:57,360 --> 00:58:00,750 Then Apollo 11. 789 00:58:00,750 --> 00:58:05,060 Here are the guys that flew Apollo 11. 790 00:58:05,060 --> 00:58:07,090 There's Neil Armstrong. 791 00:58:07,090 --> 00:58:08,040 And there's Buzz Aldrin. 792 00:58:08,040 --> 00:58:13,150 These pictures were taken when they were young. 793 00:58:13,150 --> 00:58:15,710 They don't look like that anymore. 794 00:58:15,710 --> 00:58:24,380 And Mike Collins stayed in orbit while Neil and Buzz 795 00:58:24,380 --> 00:58:25,630 landed on the moon. 796 00:58:30,350 --> 00:58:34,110 And there is a picture of, this is the arm 797 00:58:34,110 --> 00:58:37,020 patch for Apollo 11. 798 00:58:37,020 --> 00:58:38,445 It's the Eagle. 799 00:58:38,445 --> 00:58:43,140 The spacecraft, the Lunar Module was the Eagle. 800 00:58:43,140 --> 00:58:47,850 And there it is, landing on the moon. 801 00:58:50,730 --> 00:58:56,610 Now, in the aftermath of Apollo 11, this is Newton's 802 00:58:56,610 --> 00:59:00,370 tomb in Westminster Abbey. 803 00:59:00,370 --> 00:59:08,100 And I recently went to Westminster Abbey to see, 804 00:59:08,100 --> 00:59:10,270 again, Newton's tomb. 805 00:59:10,270 --> 00:59:12,550 And they wouldn't let you go up to it. 806 00:59:12,550 --> 00:59:14,330 Before, you could walk up to it. 807 00:59:14,330 --> 00:59:17,195 And you could pat the-- 808 00:59:17,195 --> 00:59:19,180 but now you couldn't. 809 00:59:19,180 --> 00:59:24,800 And I was talking to one of the guides there. 810 00:59:24,800 --> 00:59:29,000 And I told them what had happened in Apollo 11. 811 00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:32,160 I said, there was a message left on 812 00:59:32,160 --> 00:59:35,220 Newton's tomb with flowers. 813 00:59:35,220 --> 00:59:38,790 And it said, "The Eagle has landed." 814 00:59:38,790 --> 00:59:41,410 And his eyes just lit up. 815 00:59:41,410 --> 00:59:45,480 He said, "I was here when that happened. 816 00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:46,880 This was my job. 817 00:59:46,880 --> 00:59:51,720 And I saw the symbol, the flowers. 818 00:59:51,720 --> 00:59:55,690 And I saw the note at that time." He said, "It really did 819 00:59:55,690 --> 00:59:58,800 happen." And there it is. 820 00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:01,105 There is Newton's tomb. 821 01:00:01,105 --> 01:00:02,850 It's a huge thing. 822 01:00:06,040 --> 01:00:13,200 If you stand in front of it, you're no 823 01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:17,630 taller than the base. 824 01:00:17,630 --> 01:00:28,420 And so that was the story about Westminster Abbey and 825 01:00:28,420 --> 01:00:32,510 "Sir Isaac, the Eagle has landed." 826 01:00:32,510 --> 01:00:35,430 It was Howard Johnson who knew about this. 827 01:00:35,430 --> 01:00:40,070 Howard Johnson was president of MIT not too long ago. 828 01:00:40,070 --> 01:00:44,600 And a friend of his was killing time between flights. 829 01:00:44,600 --> 01:00:49,040 And he went to Westminster Abbey, and he saw this note. 830 01:00:49,040 --> 01:00:54,540 And he told Howard Johnson about it. 831 01:00:54,540 --> 01:00:56,810 And Howard Johnson told me. 832 01:00:56,810 --> 01:01:00,590 And it's very, very-- brings tears to your eye when you 833 01:01:00,590 --> 01:01:05,885 think that they were able to actually do this. 834 01:01:10,120 --> 01:01:12,600 And I'm still pretty emotional. 835 01:01:12,600 --> 01:01:20,476 "Sir Isaac, the Eagle has landed." So thank you. 836 01:01:20,476 --> 01:01:29,670 [APPLAUSE] 837 01:01:29,670 --> 01:01:34,220 If you have any questions, fire away. 838 01:01:34,220 --> 01:01:36,590 If you don't have any questions, I had a good time. 839 01:01:36,590 --> 01:01:37,840 I hope you did, too. 840 01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:51,960 AUDIENCE: First of all, on the numerology, was that all your 841 01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:52,720 personal touch? 842 01:01:52,720 --> 01:01:54,800 Or was that an active discussion topic? 843 01:01:54,800 --> 01:01:58,570 PROFESSOR: No, that was just me talking to nobody. 844 01:02:01,470 --> 01:02:11,910 No, I was really struck by the factoring 1961 and getting the 845 01:02:11,910 --> 01:02:13,620 date out of that. 846 01:02:13,620 --> 01:02:20,400 That just didn't seem like it should be, unless somebody was 847 01:02:20,400 --> 01:02:29,140 moving the hands, and we were able to get the job. 848 01:02:29,140 --> 01:02:39,830 And the number 17, I was just fiddling around one day, and I 849 01:02:39,830 --> 01:02:47,090 said, oh, maybe that's why 17 was the last flight to the 850 01:02:47,090 --> 01:02:54,310 moon, because there's only one other prime Fermat 851 01:02:54,310 --> 01:02:56,990 number beyond 17. 852 01:02:56,990 --> 01:03:05,040 And if you used that number, it'd be much too big for 853 01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:10,208 having anything to do with the number of the flights. 854 01:03:10,208 --> 01:03:15,020 AUDIENCE: I have a question about the orbital mechanics 855 01:03:15,020 --> 01:03:19,870 that you were looking at of that early period. 856 01:03:19,870 --> 01:03:23,150 I was in high school several weeks ago, and somewhere 857 01:03:23,150 --> 01:03:31,060 around 1951 or 1952, in an advanced math class, we were 858 01:03:31,060 --> 01:03:34,935 doing celestial orbital mechanics. 859 01:03:34,935 --> 01:03:37,700 And we were doing it from a small textbook 860 01:03:37,700 --> 01:03:38,840 imported from England. 861 01:03:38,840 --> 01:03:42,640 And it was written by somebody who I didn't recognize as a 862 01:03:42,640 --> 01:03:45,690 mathematician that year, Arthur C. Clarke. 863 01:03:45,690 --> 01:03:48,220 PROFESSOR: Oh yes, of course. 864 01:03:48,220 --> 01:03:49,630 He just passed away recently. 865 01:03:49,630 --> 01:03:52,680 AUDIENCE: Yeah, and now I've got to go home and find out if 866 01:03:52,680 --> 01:03:56,240 multiple body orbits were in it or not. 867 01:03:56,240 --> 01:03:57,830 PROFESSOR: No, he didn't-- 868 01:03:57,830 --> 01:04:00,050 you mean the one I was showing you? 869 01:04:00,050 --> 01:04:05,430 No, he said he was not impressed at all by that. 870 01:04:05,430 --> 01:04:07,460 I didn't send it to him. 871 01:04:07,460 --> 01:04:08,590 Somebody else did. 872 01:04:08,590 --> 01:04:12,490 And he said, well, that's not a problem. 873 01:04:12,490 --> 01:04:15,650 Well, it's not a problem until you try to do it. 874 01:04:15,650 --> 01:04:18,068 So he was just not interested. 875 01:04:18,068 --> 01:04:22,052 AUDIENCE: Work it on the blackboard for him. 876 01:04:22,052 --> 01:04:22,550 Thank you. 877 01:04:22,550 --> 01:04:24,050 PROFESSOR: OK. 878 01:04:24,050 --> 01:04:24,762 Yes? 879 01:04:24,762 --> 01:04:29,440 AUDIENCE: Where were you when Neil Armstrong 880 01:04:29,440 --> 01:04:30,440 walked on the moon? 881 01:04:30,440 --> 01:04:32,130 PROFESSOR: I was in Houston. 882 01:04:32,130 --> 01:04:36,440 And I was in the center there. 883 01:04:36,440 --> 01:04:39,520 And we were all wringing our hands. 884 01:04:44,370 --> 01:04:52,210 The alarm that came off just before landing, none of us 885 01:04:52,210 --> 01:04:56,470 knew, except the one person who had to know, and that was 886 01:04:56,470 --> 01:05:01,630 the, what's his name. 887 01:05:01,630 --> 01:05:04,470 I can't think of his name. 888 01:05:04,470 --> 01:05:07,780 But he was the one who said, he knew what the alarms were. 889 01:05:07,780 --> 01:05:08,350 Forget it. 890 01:05:08,350 --> 01:05:11,400 They're OK. 891 01:05:11,400 --> 01:05:14,830 Because everyone else, if he hadn't spoken up, they were 892 01:05:14,830 --> 01:05:18,600 ready to scrub it, because they 893 01:05:18,600 --> 01:05:20,040 didn't know what happened. 894 01:05:20,040 --> 01:05:24,360 And they would have just decided to play it 895 01:05:24,360 --> 01:05:26,460 safe and not land. 896 01:05:26,460 --> 01:05:30,320 But it was not a problem. 897 01:05:30,320 --> 01:05:36,520 Actually, what was happening was that the computer had a 898 01:05:36,520 --> 01:05:40,080 lot of jobs to do simultaneously. 899 01:05:40,080 --> 01:05:42,300 It can only do one thing at a time. 900 01:05:42,300 --> 01:05:46,030 But it would do a piece of a job, and then it would switch 901 01:05:46,030 --> 01:05:46,870 to another one. 902 01:05:46,870 --> 01:05:53,990 And all the time, it had to be reading the accelerometer 903 01:05:53,990 --> 01:05:57,870 information and calculating what the x-acceleration was, 904 01:05:57,870 --> 01:06:00,180 lots of things to do. 905 01:06:00,180 --> 01:06:04,150 And it had more to do than it had time to do it. 906 01:06:04,150 --> 01:06:08,770 And the reason was that somebody, and Buzz Aldrin has 907 01:06:08,770 --> 01:06:17,110 admitted to it now, that he put on the ascent radar, just 908 01:06:17,110 --> 01:06:24,670 in case they were told to not land but leave, they'd be all 909 01:06:24,670 --> 01:06:28,610 set with their radar. 910 01:06:28,610 --> 01:06:36,070 And by leaving that on, which the computer would do, if they 911 01:06:36,070 --> 01:06:39,200 were actually launching to the moon, it was just an 912 01:06:39,200 --> 01:06:42,230 additional task which was not supposed to be 913 01:06:42,230 --> 01:06:44,370 done at that time. 914 01:06:44,370 --> 01:06:53,040 And so fortunately, the guy who was in charge knew that 915 01:06:53,040 --> 01:06:57,655 that was what the problem was, and he just said forget it. 916 01:06:57,655 --> 01:06:58,905 Let's go. 917 01:07:01,395 --> 01:07:04,000 It's one of those things that you don't want to be 918 01:07:04,000 --> 01:07:06,790 responsible for. 919 01:07:06,790 --> 01:07:09,480 You don't want to have to be the one who says, go ahead, 920 01:07:09,480 --> 01:07:12,840 and then have it smashed into the surface of the moon. 921 01:07:12,840 --> 01:07:18,600 You'd be very serious about what you would do with the 922 01:07:18,600 --> 01:07:19,850 rest of your life. 923 01:07:22,878 --> 01:07:24,854 Any other questions? 924 01:07:24,854 --> 01:07:25,720 AUDIENCE: Dr. Battin? 925 01:07:25,720 --> 01:07:26,660 On your left. 926 01:07:26,660 --> 01:07:30,746 I worked at the lab on the guidance system. 927 01:07:30,746 --> 01:07:33,920 And I think the astronaut students, your old students, 928 01:07:33,920 --> 01:07:36,530 might be interested knowing, it wasn't just one program. 929 01:07:36,530 --> 01:07:40,400 But the Lunar Module and the Command Module were very 930 01:07:40,400 --> 01:07:43,730 different, because of the ascent and landing. 931 01:07:43,730 --> 01:07:46,240 And also, the lunar module was a very 932 01:07:46,240 --> 01:07:47,610 early digital autopilot. 933 01:07:47,610 --> 01:07:51,876 It worked on a phase plane to decide when to fire its jets. 934 01:07:51,876 --> 01:07:55,700 And for ascent, it didn't have a "gimbal-able" engine, so the 935 01:07:55,700 --> 01:07:59,525 whole scheme for controlling it was very different. 936 01:07:59,525 --> 01:08:05,010 PROFESSOR: Well, the interesting thing about the 937 01:08:05,010 --> 01:08:10,490 LEM computer was that the people who were responsible 938 01:08:10,490 --> 01:08:13,100 for the LEM said, "OK, well, we'll put a computer in. 939 01:08:13,100 --> 01:08:19,439 We'll do our own." And we kept saying, and NASA kept saying, 940 01:08:19,439 --> 01:08:21,529 why do we want to do that? 941 01:08:21,529 --> 01:08:26,840 I mean, if the Command Module computer will functionally do 942 01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:30,460 the same things that the Lunar Module computer is supposed to 943 01:08:30,460 --> 01:08:32,149 do, then let's do it. 944 01:08:32,149 --> 01:08:34,109 Let's just change the program. 945 01:08:34,109 --> 01:08:39,149 Let's don't reinvent a new computer for that job. 946 01:08:39,149 --> 01:08:45,649 And fortunately, the decision was that there would only be 947 01:08:45,649 --> 01:08:47,090 one computer. 948 01:08:47,090 --> 01:08:50,939 We had two sets of software to design, but we didn't do it 949 01:08:50,939 --> 01:08:54,390 for two different computers. 950 01:08:54,390 --> 01:09:02,649 Actually, the Lunar Module had, I 951 01:09:02,649 --> 01:09:03,960 forget what it's called. 952 01:09:03,960 --> 01:09:13,859 But it was a little computer which could do basic things. 953 01:09:13,859 --> 01:09:19,590 And if you couldn't do anything with the big 954 01:09:19,590 --> 01:09:23,810 computer, at least with that, it could run 955 01:09:23,810 --> 01:09:25,490 the engine, for example. 956 01:09:25,490 --> 01:09:29,899 It may not calculate what the result's supposed to be. 957 01:09:29,899 --> 01:09:31,859 You'd just give it to the astronaut. 958 01:09:31,859 --> 01:09:37,490 And the simple jobs that you expected the computer to do, 959 01:09:37,490 --> 01:09:40,174 you would do. 960 01:09:40,174 --> 01:09:45,000 And again, they never, ever had to do that. 961 01:09:45,000 --> 01:09:45,890 They never had to use it. 962 01:09:45,890 --> 01:09:46,809 But it was always there. 963 01:09:46,809 --> 01:09:49,290 And they were always trained for it. 964 01:09:49,290 --> 01:09:53,985 But it didn't ever have to be used. 965 01:10:00,490 --> 01:10:01,800 Yes? 966 01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:03,180 AUDIENCE: I had hear about Draper 967 01:10:03,180 --> 01:10:04,540 attempting to be an astronaut. 968 01:10:04,540 --> 01:10:05,565 Whatever happened with that? 969 01:10:05,565 --> 01:10:06,830 Did they just decide-- 970 01:10:06,830 --> 01:10:07,680 PROFESSOR: Draper what? 971 01:10:07,680 --> 01:10:08,710 AUDIENCE: Wanting to be an astronaut. 972 01:10:08,710 --> 01:10:10,170 Did they just determine-- 973 01:10:10,170 --> 01:10:11,990 PROFESSOR: Oh, well, I mean ha ha. 974 01:10:14,740 --> 01:10:18,205 Actually, Draper would have gone if they had picked him. 975 01:10:21,790 --> 01:10:25,970 The Instrumentation Laboratory existed before Apollo. 976 01:10:25,970 --> 01:10:30,810 And he personally designed instruments for aircraft. 977 01:10:30,810 --> 01:10:34,340 And then he would test-fly them in the plane, and he 978 01:10:34,340 --> 01:10:35,720 would be the pilot. 979 01:10:35,720 --> 01:10:42,240 So he was a test pilot in that sense. 980 01:10:42,240 --> 01:10:47,600 But the fact that he was 60 years old, that's unheard of. 981 01:10:50,110 --> 01:10:51,870 I remember when I was 60 years old. 982 01:10:51,870 --> 01:10:54,470 It was a while ago. 983 01:10:54,470 --> 01:11:04,820 But no, I don't know whether he was actually 984 01:11:04,820 --> 01:11:06,230 serious about it. 985 01:11:06,230 --> 01:11:13,130 He did write a letter to Bob Seamans saying that he would 986 01:11:13,130 --> 01:11:15,280 like to be considered. 987 01:11:15,280 --> 01:11:23,370 And they could say, well, we considered you, but you 988 01:11:23,370 --> 01:11:25,750 couldn't do it, physically couldn't do it. 989 01:11:29,420 --> 01:11:31,762 AUDIENCE: Also, in those days, all of the astronauts were 990 01:11:31,762 --> 01:11:33,630 military pilots. 991 01:11:33,630 --> 01:11:37,145 PROFESSOR: And there weren't any women. 992 01:11:37,145 --> 01:11:41,420 There weren't any women, because there weren't any 993 01:11:41,420 --> 01:11:43,310 women test pilots. 994 01:11:43,310 --> 01:11:46,900 Had there been women test pilots, that'd be OK. 995 01:11:46,900 --> 01:11:55,390 Janice Voss was the first female astronaut from MIT. 996 01:11:55,390 --> 01:12:03,220 And she helped me with my course. 997 01:12:03,220 --> 01:12:07,630 She was really a very good student. 998 01:12:07,630 --> 01:12:13,900 And when she graduated, she applied to be an astronaut. 999 01:12:13,900 --> 01:12:22,120 And she was turned down once, twice, and she was turned down 1000 01:12:22,120 --> 01:12:24,490 three times. 1001 01:12:24,490 --> 01:12:27,550 The fourth time, she was selected. 1002 01:12:27,550 --> 01:12:29,780 And so she says, don't ever give up. 1003 01:12:29,780 --> 01:12:32,050 If you want to do something, make sure that 1004 01:12:32,050 --> 01:12:33,790 you don't give up. 1005 01:12:33,790 --> 01:12:37,800 It may not come right away, but it could come eventually. 1006 01:12:37,800 --> 01:12:41,090 So she was very excited about that. 1007 01:12:41,090 --> 01:12:48,890 And she was actually the first female astronaut from MIT. 1008 01:12:48,890 --> 01:12:50,410 We've had other-- 1009 01:12:50,410 --> 01:12:58,920 well, you just saw some of the guys who went to the moon were 1010 01:12:58,920 --> 01:13:02,410 all MIT students. 1011 01:13:02,410 --> 01:13:06,430 Incidentally, when Buzz Aldrin was a student, he did not have 1012 01:13:06,430 --> 01:13:09,260 a label on saying I'm going to be flying to the moon. 1013 01:13:09,260 --> 01:13:12,890 He was a military pilot. 1014 01:13:12,890 --> 01:13:18,060 And he was interested in, I guess they had begun 1015 01:13:18,060 --> 01:13:19,570 to talk about it. 1016 01:13:19,570 --> 01:13:25,650 He was interested in doing some of the rendezvous 1017 01:13:25,650 --> 01:13:26,900 calculations. 1018 01:13:29,475 --> 01:13:32,440 But he was not representing NASA. 1019 01:13:32,440 --> 01:13:38,780 He was just there to get a Master's degree. 1020 01:13:38,780 --> 01:13:46,630 And all the other astronauts, none of them arrived and said, 1021 01:13:46,630 --> 01:13:48,800 I am an astronaut, and I want to [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 1022 01:13:48,800 --> 01:13:50,460 They were all just students. 1023 01:13:50,460 --> 01:13:55,435 Mostly, they were from the military. 1024 01:13:55,435 --> 01:14:00,680 They might be from the Air Force Academy, 1025 01:14:00,680 --> 01:14:01,810 that sort of thing. 1026 01:14:01,810 --> 01:14:07,720 But it was only afterwards that they got an assignment, 1027 01:14:07,720 --> 01:14:10,765 actually being an astronaut. 1028 01:14:19,724 --> 01:14:21,110 Yes? 1029 01:14:21,110 --> 01:14:23,190 AUDIENCE: Can I ask your opinion on the 1030 01:14:23,190 --> 01:14:24,777 Constellation program? 1031 01:14:24,777 --> 01:14:28,500 I imagine you think it's long overdue, but are they doing it 1032 01:14:28,500 --> 01:14:29,590 the right way? 1033 01:14:29,590 --> 01:14:32,910 Do we still have the skills to go back to the moon? 1034 01:14:32,910 --> 01:14:34,356 PROFESSOR: I don't know. 1035 01:14:34,356 --> 01:14:35,628 I really don't know. 1036 01:14:43,490 --> 01:14:49,790 They're doing so many things which are just unbelievable, 1037 01:14:49,790 --> 01:14:55,950 the Messenger program of getting a 1038 01:14:55,950 --> 01:14:59,670 spacecraft to Mercury. 1039 01:14:59,670 --> 01:15:06,130 And they did that by at least a dozen or more fly-bys of 1040 01:15:06,130 --> 01:15:12,390 Earth and/or Venus in order to get the energy lowered down to 1041 01:15:12,390 --> 01:15:17,620 where you could actually contact Venus and maybe go 1042 01:15:17,620 --> 01:15:20,140 around, orbit it, or take pictures of it, 1043 01:15:20,140 --> 01:15:21,390 or what have you. 1044 01:15:24,730 --> 01:15:31,440 But I don't know any more about that today than anybody 1045 01:15:31,440 --> 01:15:32,690 who reads the paper. 1046 01:15:35,150 --> 01:15:39,140 The Constellation is, I'm not sure. 1047 01:15:39,140 --> 01:15:42,000 Is this is a new program or what? 1048 01:15:42,000 --> 01:15:46,686 AUDIENCE: No, that's the return to the moon, and then 1049 01:15:46,686 --> 01:15:48,150 to continue on to Mars. 1050 01:15:48,150 --> 01:15:52,060 PROFESSOR: They got a name for it now, oh. 1051 01:15:52,060 --> 01:16:01,640 Well, I think it's certainly a great idea to do what we did. 1052 01:16:01,640 --> 01:16:05,980 And it would be wonderful to be able to do it again. 1053 01:16:05,980 --> 01:16:09,910 And I had a student, she was actually a 1054 01:16:09,910 --> 01:16:11,455 freshman at the time. 1055 01:16:11,455 --> 01:16:14,120 And she was Japanese. 1056 01:16:14,120 --> 01:16:18,155 And I was a freshman advisor. 1057 01:16:18,155 --> 01:16:21,040 We were going around to ask, what would you like to do? 1058 01:16:21,040 --> 01:16:21,580 What would you like? 1059 01:16:21,580 --> 01:16:22,960 And it got to her. 1060 01:16:22,960 --> 01:16:29,160 She said, I would like to be the first woman on Mars. 1061 01:16:29,160 --> 01:16:30,150 And she was serious. 1062 01:16:30,150 --> 01:16:32,110 I want to be an astronaut. 1063 01:16:32,110 --> 01:16:35,530 The fact that I'm Japanese shouldn't have any problem. 1064 01:16:38,630 --> 01:16:40,130 I said, well, that's great. 1065 01:16:40,130 --> 01:16:42,880 I'll be there to cheer you on. 1066 01:16:42,880 --> 01:16:50,420 But the Japanese do seem to be getting more interested in 1067 01:16:50,420 --> 01:16:53,470 space, as are the Chinese. 1068 01:16:53,470 --> 01:16:58,700 And the only thing that's going to get us really 1069 01:16:58,700 --> 01:17:02,760 interested is when it looks like they're going to do it, 1070 01:17:02,760 --> 01:17:09,370 and we're going to be left in the dust. If as von Braun 1071 01:17:09,370 --> 01:17:17,830 said, if you had tried to cooperate with the Russians, 1072 01:17:17,830 --> 01:17:19,310 there wouldn't be a program. 1073 01:17:32,330 --> 01:17:33,580 What was I going to say? 1074 01:17:40,378 --> 01:17:42,240 I've forgotten what I was going to say. 1075 01:17:42,240 --> 01:17:49,990 But anyhow, there are so many opportunities that we 1076 01:17:49,990 --> 01:17:56,640 hopefully will not ignore, just because there isn't any 1077 01:17:56,640 --> 01:17:57,890 particular competition. 1078 01:18:01,230 --> 01:18:07,750 The whole business of Apollo, we learned how to make these 1079 01:18:07,750 --> 01:18:09,930 computer chips. 1080 01:18:09,930 --> 01:18:15,400 And the chips were manufactured by Raytheon for 1081 01:18:15,400 --> 01:18:27,930 Apollo, and the largest number of computer chips that were 1082 01:18:27,930 --> 01:18:37,030 being made were the ones for Apollo. 1083 01:18:37,030 --> 01:18:40,650 There were very few applications. 1084 01:18:40,650 --> 01:18:47,400 And so you might say that the Apollo computer really was the 1085 01:18:47,400 --> 01:18:52,780 original device that we have here. 1086 01:18:52,780 --> 01:19:01,200 And I think that that is true, that with an application, 1087 01:19:01,200 --> 01:19:03,770 demand, you're going to learn how to do 1088 01:19:03,770 --> 01:19:05,020 it better and cheaper. 1089 01:19:21,330 --> 01:19:21,770 OK. 1090 01:19:21,770 --> 01:19:22,970 [APPLAUSE] 1091 01:19:22,970 --> 01:19:23,870 Thank you for coming. 1092 01:19:23,870 --> 01:19:25,420 [APPLAUSE]