HP 9845 and space schuttle program was Re: Any HP 9845 Desktops Still In Service?

On Thu, 29 Apr 1999, Joe wrote: Joe, There's no trace of anything to be found...not even for the HP 9000/520 used to migrate some of my applications. Let's see if you'll regret asking me what I did with it? :-) I actually used the 9845B (Model T) for Space Shuttle flight support (STS-2 through STS-24). I worked at Rockwell International Space Systems Division in Downey, California (now owned by Boeing). I started out in 1979 doing bean-counting work. I wrote BASIC programs that create bar charts, plots, and tabulated data for the Flight Systems Design and Performance department. My manager, Bill Schleich, was the one who developed the shuttle's roll maneuver shortly after lift-off. Most (99.9%) of the engineers were IBM/TSO die-hards because they were old Apollo guys. They considered the HP 9845 to be a toy, but they were really afraid of it. Some of those guys preferred to use a printable tele-type terminal over CRTs! On the first shuttle flight there was unexpected lofting of the vehicle that we didn't account for in our trajectory predictions. Finally an engineer named David Pearson was able to trace the problem down to us not having up-to-date atmospheric data (our mainframe trajectory analysis programs used montly weather tables). Bill Schleich was also Dave Pearson's manager and he appreciated the power and versatility of the microcomputer...it helped that I impressed him with fancy graphics on the internal thermal printer (mainframe hardcopies of graphics had to be trucked from Seal Beach - about 20 miles away). Previously, I crossed-over to doing some small engineering studies where I'd plot data, etc., using the 9845. But the big project was for the flight support task! There was a lady named Kathy O'Connor who did some cool graphics with the robotic arm against a stunning line-drawing of the shuttle in X-Y-Z drawings. Anyway, to shorten this story, we had the launch site send us FAXes of their weather balloon data (no FTP in those days) for weeks, days, hours, and up to 15 minutes before launch. We had an HP 9872A plotter that also had a digitizer sight. I wrote an interactive program to have an engineer align the FAX on the plotter's plate and digitize points along the different data lines. The points were stored in arrays and fed to a cubic-spline interpolation program to recreate the line with more (smoother) points. The output was formatted into lines to be uploaded to the IBM mainframe where our big number-crunching trajectory analysis (M-50) program ran...it was much too large for the 9845 to even dream of running. The data went out over a GTE 300-baud modem that was about as large as one of today's VCRs. HP provided the (BASIC) software to do the actual file transfer and communications with the mainframe. Someone else wrote the programs on the mainframe to capture the uploaded data for feeding into the M50 program. When the M50 finished, it put the data back into tabulated form and downloaded it, one line at a time, to the HP. I wrote a suite of programs that read in the captured data and parsed it into data arrays which were plotted on the CRT for quick "DUMP GRAPHICS" snap-shots. We also used the 9872 4-color plotter for comparison plots but the thermal printer plots were needed quickly. Believe it or not, the process was fast enough that we once actually had plots for T-15minute winds in time to run downstairs in Rockwell's mission control room (3rd or 4th backup to NASA's MC in Houston) and see a live launch on live NASA video feeds, including infra reds. After about the 5th shuttle flight, I was no longer on-call and other engineers (all older than me because I was only 21 in 1981...I started programming professionally right out of high school) were following my procedures. I continued to make modifications for new features, etc., until the 10th flight...I wrote every single byte of code for that suite of programs except for the package to communicate over the modem! I had transferred to Seal Beach a few flights before Challenger exploded. When I heard about it, I called one of the engineers responsible for the "Day of Launch Flight Support Effort" and he told me that that was the first flight that they didn't run the program (except for STS-1 of course because we didn't know we needed it). They wouldn't have seen anything strange even if they had run the program...but I like to imagine that my code would've warned them! :-) It's been a long time since I had a chance to brag about that. Thanks for asking. BTW, I was the system administrator for that particular 9845. There were at least 3 others managed by different groups. I had access anytime I wanted or needed it. As a result, I ignored the Apple II, IBM PC, etc., until I migrated to the HP 9000/520. But even with the 9000/520 being such a step up, I bought an Amiga in 1986 and have been in love with Amigas ever since! Visit http://www.amiga.com or http://www.amiga.de if the first one is down. Later, David _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/_/ David C. Waters _/_/ Integrated Business Solutions _/_/ _/_/ Multimedia Business Answers _/_/ Video Audio CD-ROM Publishing _/_/ _/_/ E-Mail: mbanet(a)netcom.com _/_/ World Wide Web and TV Access! _/_/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/