this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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HistoryPhotos

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Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton with the extensive amount of code she and her team wrote to guide the NASA mission to the Moon, USA, 1969 (media.piefed.social)
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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They can't replicate many things straight from the blueprints because nobody produces those parts anymore. But take the AGC (Apollo Guidiance Computer) and the earthly counterparts: they can be replaced by modern technology. Like some guys recently did, they were working with a telemetry module that sent data from the rocket back to the earth. They did not have the earthly counterpart of it anymore, a wall of cabinets with electronics to receive and decode the data. They just replaced that wall of cabinets with a script running on a Raspberry Pi.

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Oh that would be a really fun experience. If the code is available anywhere I'd love to turn it into Rust.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It is!

https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11

Note that it wasn't saved digitally, so this is reconstructed from paper and might have transcription errors

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 4 points 4 days ago

Well

There goes my Saturday

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

There are teams out there doing reconstruction of the AGCs. I mean, they have real ones there and try to figure them out. The most sophisticated "computer chips" on that thing are basic logic chips: 10 pins, two for power and ground (12V, IIRC), and 2x4 pins for three-input NOR gates. They used them for everything: building flip-flops for registers, adders, and other stuff to for a kind-of 16-bit computer.

There is loads of documentation out there on the net.