Rare Apollo Guidance Computer - AGC video

During the transfer of our blog to it's final domain www.whitelabelspace.com some time has been sent tidying up the old posts, reading the old comments and recategorising the tags. A couple of our posts (Build Your Own Apollo Guidance Computer & Why not try a Virtual Apollo Guidance Computer) centered the Apollo Guidance Computer AGC.

Google Lunar X-PRIZE's own Mike Fabio had commented on one of the posts:

Can we get some videos of this thing in action? That is truly awesome.
The MIT Press (go Engineers!) has recently published a book all about the computers used on the Apollo missions. Check it out here.

Well after another trawl through YouTube's immense archives we finally hit the jackpot. Here's actual footage of the Apollo Guidance Computer staring in it's own YouTube video. We're wondering how much more historically significant space age video will turn up on YouTube & how long that footage will stay available. Let's hope that this one stay's up long enough for you all to see.

Build Your Own Apollo Guidance Computer

Ever wondered what makes a spacecraft's main computer tick? Now, thanks to John Pultorak, you can make yourself a complete replica of the original guidance computer used in the NASA Apollo missions. All the documents you need to repeat his effort are given here.

The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was developed in the early 1960s by the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, and could automatically controll all of the navigational systems onboard the Apollo spacecraft.

John took 4 years to hunt down all the technical reports and find the necessary components. Also, to be sure that his replica AGC would work, he also created simulations of the complete computer's logic using modern development tools.

And if you ever wanted proof that there were some useful technology spin-offs from the space industry into other sectors, note that it was the first computer to use integrated circuits, a technology that has now become an integral part of our everyday life. In fact, the AGC used over 4000 of them!

Spaceflight and competitions have always spawned new designs and approaches so imagine what technology spin-offs will come out of the Google Lunar X PRIZE...

Why not try a Virtual Apollo Guidance Computer

As a follow up to our post Build Your Own Apollo Guidance Computer we thought that there may be a few of you that don't have time to go hunt down the components needed.
Enter the Virtual Apollo Guidance Computer.

You will need to have middle to advanced computer skills to use this but full instructions are provided on how to download/install for Win32, Linux & Mac OSX 10.4 are provided. The software is licenced as "free software" under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

If you have the "right stuff" why not help this great project out.