Apollo Guidance Computer
Landing Demos
Here are three videos of us flying and trying to land with the restored Apollo Guidance Computer:
- Our first attempt by manually inputting acceleration data
- A realistic landing with the AGC reproduction with full LM simulation
- Finally, the landings with real AGC and full LM simulation as we did forthe 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing
This was our first attempt, and the first time we successfully went through all the steps of the landing program down to landing. We kept the AGC thinking it was flying by manually feeding acceleration data. This was a huge accomplishment for the team.
The next huge step was made possible when Mike Stewart adapted the Orbiter/NASSP simulation program so it could talk to the AGC. Now we had a fully simluated LM that the AGC could pilot in realistic fashion. At this point, the repaired AGC had already been returned to its owner, so we made the demo with Mike's AGC replica. The first time Mike demonstrated it and succesfully landed, I could hardly believe it. It was as if we were there.
Look at the second landing attempt in particular, where I put in the audio of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin actual landing and we simulate so closely we get th3 1202 alarm. It matches completely.
In July 2019, we got reunited with the real AGC and flew it with the full LM simulation on the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing. Mike flew it at MIT, in front of some of the engineers that developed the AGC and its program, and we got to interact with several of them. That was another extraordinary moment.