When it comes to historic spacecraft, the Apollo 11 is a big one. With this in mind, the source code for Apollo 11’s guidance computer has been available online for years but now it’s available on GitHub.
The source code was made available by former NASA intern Chris Garry and features the entire Guidance Computers source code. The source code features more than a few jokes, with line 666 referring to the “NUMERO MYSTERIOSO”.
Including references to radio DJ Magnificent Montage’s classic song “burn, baby, burn”, the coders clearly wanted to add a humorous side to their code as it took humankind to the moon. These have even led to jokes hinting at Apollo 13’s ‘bugs’, including the following from SilverWingedSeraph:
A customer has had a fairly serious problem with stirring the cryogenic tanks with a circuit fault present. To reproduce:
- Build CSM
- Perform mission up to translunar coast
- During translunar coast, attempt to stir cryo tanks
If a wiring fault exists, the issue may be replicated. Be aware that this may be hazardous to the tester attempting it.
So far my favourite reply is the following from Ibotinelly:
Does it happens only with translunar coast (sol-3-a), or any moon coasting? It may be a problem with the moon. Just trying to narrow down the issue.
The GitHub repository even allows suggestions for changes, why you would want to change a 1960’s space program code I’m not so sure but it’s definitely a historic piece of code.
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