Download PDF Digital Apollo Human and Machine in Spaceflight Audible Audio Edition David A Mindell Kyle Tait Tantor Audio Books
Download As PDF : Digital Apollo Human and Machine in Spaceflight Audible Audio Edition David A Mindell Kyle Tait Tantor Audio Books
As Apollo 11's lunar module descended toward the moon under automatic control, a program alarm in the guidance computer's software nearly caused a mission abort. Neil Armstrong responded by switching off the automatic mode and taking direct control. He stopped monitoring the computer and began flying the spacecraft, relying on skill to land it and earning praise for a triumph of human over machine. In Digital Apollo, engineer-historian David Mindell takes this famous moment as a starting point for an exploration of the relationship between humans and computers in the Apollo program. Â
Digital Apollo examines the design and execution of each of the six Apollo moon landings, drawing on transcripts and data telemetry from the flights, astronaut interviews, and NASA's extensive archives. Mindell's exploration of how human pilots and automated systems worked together to achieve the ultimate in flight - a lunar landing - traces and reframes the debate over the future of humans and automation in space. The results have implications for any venture in which human roles seem threatened by automated systems, whether it is the work at our desktops or the future of exploration.
Download PDF Digital Apollo Human and Machine in Spaceflight Audible Audio Edition David A Mindell Kyle Tait Tantor Audio Books
"This book is not a casual read unless you are a driven reader of space histories (I am). It does however fill a huge gap in available literature about the Apollo Guidance Computer. It is very detailed yet flows well, and is narrative enough to not feel like a dry treatise. But you'd best be pretty interested in the topic, because the author assumes this and does not look back once he gets going... as should be the case.
The book details the development of the AGC and its precursors from the beginning onward, spending lots of time at both NASA and the MIT lab. The details are specific and the storytelling clear and generally compelling. He covers both the technical details and the political, managerial and engineering drivers and decisions that brought about the ACG as we know it today.
If you want to know how Apollo could fly to the moon, land there and come home on roughly 36k of program memory and 2k of RAM, this book will, finally, tell you how."
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Digital Apollo Human and Machine in Spaceflight Audible Audio Edition David A Mindell Kyle Tait Tantor Audio Books Reviews :
Digital Apollo Human and Machine in Spaceflight Audible Audio Edition David A Mindell Kyle Tait Tantor Audio Books Reviews
- This book is not a casual read unless you are a driven reader of space histories (I am). It does however fill a huge gap in available literature about the Apollo Guidance Computer. It is very detailed yet flows well, and is narrative enough to not feel like a dry treatise. But you'd best be pretty interested in the topic, because the author assumes this and does not look back once he gets going... as should be the case.
The book details the development of the AGC and its precursors from the beginning onward, spending lots of time at both NASA and the MIT lab. The details are specific and the storytelling clear and generally compelling. He covers both the technical details and the political, managerial and engineering drivers and decisions that brought about the ACG as we know it today.
If you want to know how Apollo could fly to the moon, land there and come home on roughly 36k of program memory and 2k of RAM, this book will, finally, tell you how. - You might think a book entitled "Digital Apollo" would be about the development, programming and operation of the digital computers in the Apollo Command (CM) and Lunar (LM) Modules. You would be partially right. About half of Dr. David Mindell's superb volume covers those subjects, very readably and in great detail. But the book's scope is far broader than that. It is really nothing less than a comprehensive examination of the relationships between humans and machines from the earliest days of aviation, through the X-15, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle eras, and into the future of spaceflight.
It's a fascinating story that has not, to my knowledge, previously been told in any depth. The evolution of the Apollo computer hardware and software occurred in parallel with the evolution of the attitudes of steely eyed NASA astronauts, who fought hard to avoid relinquishing any control to machines. All the early astronauts were test pilots--their hard-won experiences with primitive vacuum-tube systems in aircraft had convinced them that "electronics always fail." Thus they opposed NASA's decision, mandated by the complexity of lunar missions, to depend largely on new-fangled transistorized digital computers to help them fly the Apollo spacecraft. At one time, in those days before "fly-by-wire" control systems, some Apollo astronauts wanted actual cables connecting a conventional aircraft-type stick with the CM's attitude control rocket motors. That didn't happen. They feared that computer failures would jeopardize their missions and perhaps cost them their lives. That also didn't happen. To find out what DID happen, there's no better source than "Digital Apollo."
Dr. Mindell says his book "...tells the story of the relationship between human and machine in the Apollo project and how that relationship shaped the experience and the technology of flying to the moon. It is a story of human pilots, of automated systems, and of the two working together to achieve the ultimate in flight. It is also a story of public imagery, professional identities and social relationships among engineers, pilots, flight controllers and many others, each with their own visions of spaceflight." That's a good summary, but I'd like to add to it. First, words like "social relationships" and "working together" and "visions" should not deter technophiles from reading "Digital Apollo." Those subjects are all in there, but much of the book is at the down-and-dirty technical level of bits and bytes and magnetic core memories and DSKYs and other esoterica. Dr. Mindell superbly integrates the human and computer stories in a way that almost anyone should find interesting. Second, "Digital Apollo" is one of the best-written spaceflight books I've read in years. Its tone is brisk and conversational, but the information it contains is deep, broad and very well-explained. You don't have to be a space cadet to enjoy it. It is also exceptionally accurate. I came across only a few minor errors in the parts of the story that I know, such as calling a metal alloy used in the X-15 "Iconel-X" rather than "Inconel-X" (the alloy and the name came from the International Nickel Company, hence "Inco").
"Digital Apollo" fills a niche in the history of technology and spaceflight in a most outstanding way. It reminds me a little of Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of A New Machine," and that is high praise indeed. Even if you think you know Apollo, you should read it. You're sure to learn a lot, and be entertained in the process. I recommend it most highly. - This book is too good to race through... I've been reading this book slowly over the last two months, and the technical content and details of the Apollo Program (with focus on the man and machine interactions) are outstanding.
I work on training flight simulators, and the background sections on the X-15 Program (and its simulators), which formed a basis for the Apollo mission planning, and human(pilot)-machine interface design, were especially interesting.
All throughout the book, the author provides the reasons WHY things were done the way they were, not just HOW they were done (which has been the case in all the other Apollo-related books I've read previously).
Additionally, significantly detailed explanations of all stages of the Apollo Guidance Computer(AGC) hardware and software development process are provided. I was especially impressed with the "real explanation" of the root cause of the famous 1201/1202 program alarms, which came close to causing Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to abort the Apollo 11 (first moon) landing due to (among other things) pilot work overload. The fact is that the software did not have to change for Apollo 12 to deal with the root cause of the alarms... it was the procedures that had to change to deal with the root cause of the alarms, which was due to overloading of the LM AGC, due to lack of a full understanding of the interaction of the rendezvous RADAR subsytem (which Aldrin had insisted be turned on early "just in case" of an abort, so that the pilots wouldn't have to remember to turn it on if there was an abort), with various other subsystems during the critical final decent stage of the mission - which, all combined, caused the AGC to become "overloaded" and cause the 1201 & 1202 program alarms during the most critical phase of the Apollo 11 mission.
