History Of Forgotten Moon Bases

June 16, 2025 by Al Williams 37 Comments

If you were alive when 2001: A Space Odyssey was in theaters, you might have thought it didn’t really go far enough. After all, in 1958, the US launched its first satellite. The first US astronaut went up in 1961. Eight years later, Armstrong put a boot on the moon’s surface. That was a lot of progress for 11 years. The movie came out in 1968, so what would happen in 33 years? Turns out, not as much as you would have guessed back then. [The History Guy] takes us through a trip of what could have been if progress had marched on after those first few moon landings. You can watch the video below.

The story picks up way before NASA. Each of the US military branches felt like it should take the lead on space technology. Sputnik changed everything and spawned both ARPA and NASA. The Air Force, though, had an entire space program in development, and many of the astronauts for that program became NASA astronauts.

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Repairing A Real (and Broken) Apollo-era DSKY

January 14, 2025 by Maya Posch 6 Comments

Presumably the same DSKY unit installed in the simulator at MIT.

The Display/Keyboard unit – DSKY for short – is the primary way that Apollo-era astronauts communicated with the onboard computers. Not all DSKYs ended up in space, however, with the MIT hosting a simulator that features one of these units. Unfortunately the unit that ended up at [CuriousMarc]’s lab had seen better days, with the assumption being that it was the same DSKY that was installed in a photo of the old simulator. In addition to the busted EL display and two (improper) replacement keys, the insides show signs of damaged modules and possibly worse.

Without bothering to hook the unit up to the (previously restored) guidance computer, a full teardown was begun to assess the full extent of the damage. Considering that the DSKY uses latching relays for memory and two modules were ominously marked as being defective, this made for a tense wait as the unit was disassembled.

Fortunately making new DSKY-style EL displays has first been replicated in 2019, meaning that a replacement is possible. Perhaps surprisingly, the busted display still fires up in the test rig, as a testament to how robust the technology is. At the end of the teardown, the assessment is that the unit can be restored to its original condition, which will be done in the upcoming videos in this series.

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Apollo-era PCB Reverse Engineering To KiCad

November 25, 2024 by Chris Lott 24 Comments

Earlier this year [Skyhawkson] got ahold of an Apollo-era printed circuit board which he believes was used in a NASA test stand. He took high quality photos of both sides of the board and superimposed them atop each other. After digging into a few obsolete parts from the 1960s, he was able to trace out the connections. I ran across the project just after making schematics for the Supercon badge and petal matrix. Being on a roll, I decided to take [Skyhawkson]’s work as a starting point and create KiCad schematics. Hopefully we can figure out what this circuit board does along the way.

The board is pretty simple:

approximately 6.5 x 4.5 inches
22 circuit edge connector 0.156 in pitch
31 ea two-terminal parts ( resistors, diodes )
3 ea trimmer potentiometers
7 ea transistors
parts arranged in 4 columns

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Supercon 2023: Restoring The Apollo Guidance Computer

November 6, 2024 by Lewin Day 17 Comments

Humans first visited the Moon in 1969. The last time we went was 1972, over 50 years ago. Back then, astronauts in the Apollo program made their journeys in spacecraft that relied on remarkably basic electronics that are totally unsophisticated compared to what you might find in an expensive blender or fridge these days. Core among them was the Apollo Guidance Computer, charged with keeping the craft on target as it travelled to its destination and back again.

Marc Verdiell, also known as CuriousMarc, is a bit of a dab hand at restoring old vintage electronics. Thus, when it came time to restore one of these rare and storied guidance computers, he was ready and willing to take on the task. Even better, he came to the 2023 Hackaday Supercon to tell us how it all went down!

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Polaris Dawn, And The Prudence Of A Short Spacewalk

October 3, 2024 by Tom Nardi 39 Comments

For months before liftoff, the popular press had been hyping up the fact that the Polaris Dawn mission would include the first-ever private spacewalk. Not only would this be the first time anyone who wasn’t a professional astronaut would be opening the hatch of their spacecraft and venturing outside, but it would also be the first real-world test of SpaceX’s own extravehicular activity (EVA) suits. Whether you considered it a billionaire’s publicity stunt or an important step forward for commercial spaceflight, one thing was undeniable: when that hatch opened, it was going to be a moment for the history books.

But if you happened to have been watching the live stream of the big event earlier this month, you’d be forgiven for finding the whole thing a bit…abrupt. After years of training and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, crew members Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis both spent less than eight minutes outside of the Dragon capsule. Even then, you could argue that calling it a spacewalk would be a bit of a stretch.

Neither crew member ever fully exited the spacecraft, they simply stuck their upper bodies out into space while keeping their legs within the hatch at all times. When it was all said and done, the Dragon’s hatch was locked up tight less than half an hour after it was opened.

Likely, many armchair astronauts watching at home found the whole thing rather anticlimactic. But those who know a bit about the history of human spaceflight probably found themselves unable to move off of the edge of their seat until that hatch locked into place and all crew members were back in their seats.

Flying into space is already one of the most mindbogglingly dangerous activities a human could engage in, but opening the hatch and floating out into the infinite black once you’re out there is even riskier still. Thankfully the Polaris Dawn EVA appeared to go off without a hitch, but not everyone has been so lucky on their first trip outside the capsule.

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Hackaday Links: June 9, 2024

June 9, 2024 by Dan Maloney 32 Comments

We’ve been harping a lot lately about the effort by carmakers to kill off AM radio, ostensibly because making EVs that don’t emit enough electromagnetic interference to swamp broadcast signals is a practical impossibility. In the US, push-back from lawmakers — no doubt spurred by radio industry lobbyists — has put the brakes on the move a bit, on the understandable grounds that an entire emergency communication system largely centered around AM radio has been in place for the last seven decades or so. Not so in Japan, though, as thirteen of the nation’s 47 broadcasters have voluntarily shut down their AM transmitters in what’s billed as an “impact study” by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The request for the study actually came from the broadcasters, with one being quoted in a hearing on the matter as “hop[ing] that AM broadcasting will be promptly discontinued.” So the writing is apparently on the wall for AM radio in Japan.

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The Fake Moon Landing Quarantine

June 15, 2023 by Al Williams 43 Comments

We aren’t much into theories denying the moon landing around here, but [Dagomar Degroot], an associate professor at Georgetown University, asserts that the Apollo 11 quarantine efforts were bogus. Realistically, we think today that the chance of infection from the moon, of all places, is low. So claiming it was successful is like paying for a service that prevents elephants from falling through your chimney. Sure, it worked — there hasn’t been a single elephant!

According to [Degroot], the priority was to protect the astronauts and the mission, and most of the engineering money and effort went towards that risk reduction. The — admittedly low — danger of some alien plague wiping out life on Earth wasn’t given the same priority.

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