Author here for your Apollo questions :-)

Back in the day, this would be have been a good homework assignment for an EE analog controls class.

kens - Are the collectors of the output transistors on the amplifier boards connected to the metal can? I can see from the photo that the heatsinks don't touch (there's a gap between them for the capacitors). Did they use nylon screws to prevent an electrical path through the frame?

That's a 'kunst' of UI (a gem?). One look and you instantly know the orientation of your craft.

As an amateur astro-pilot (1000h in KSP and 200+ in Flight of Nova, both flight simulators with realistic orbital mechanics) I'd like to say that in modern cockpit of the fusion propelled ships in FoA, the one thing I'm missing from Apollo-style flight instruments of KSP is the Nav-Ball.

The jet-fighter-like "ladder" style attitude meter can't be read with just one look. You need to focus to see the numbers next to the ladder steps. And then another look at the compass for a full reading. 3s of focus (away from controlling the ship) vs. 0.5 (that your subconscious has most likely already interialized).

To put that 3s into perspective, according to ship readings, Apollo 11 had <20s fuel left when it touched down on the moon.

Brings me back to playing Kerbal Space Program

Ken once again proves he's one of the greatest publishers on Hacker News.

The strong impression I always get from the entire Apollo program is "they didn't know it couldn't be done at the level of technology available, so they did it anyway".

  > 3. The FDAI's signals are more complicated than I described above. Among
  > other things, the IMU's gimbal angles use a different coordinate system from
  > the FDAI, so an electromechanical unit called GASTA (Gimbal Angle Sequence
  > Transformation Assembly) used resolvers and motors to convert the
  > coordinates.

I'm so glad I work in software.

1960s technology, designed and made in the USA. It seems that people back then were far more clever at making do with what they had.

We had an article on HN last year about a similar Soviet era device. It was a globe that showed the position of the spacecraft relative to the earth.

When I see something like this my first thought is: „there is absolutely no way current gen vibe coders and engineers will be able to replicate this“

Thank you so much for this article. We.read about all the amazing technology that was created for Apollo but this explains one in detail.

I worry with all the outsourcing over the past few decades that these and even basic engineering manufacturing technologies are being lost.