

Debugging a Live Saturn V - dblock
http://www.zamiang.com/posts/2013/10/13/red-team/

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Arjuna
For those that are not familiar, the Saturn V was equipped with 5 (yes, you
read that right)... five F-1 rocket engines. Each engine produced an
absolutely staggering 1,500,000 pounds of thrust; that's a total of 7,500,000
pounds of thrust!

Can you imagine being tucked into the small, cramped Command Module, sitting
on top of this power at lift-off?

The whole thing, the technology, the sound, the people coming together to make
it happen... it's soul-stirring.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-cv_JJOxGI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-cv_JJOxGI)

~~~
ericd
The series that that clip is from ("When We Left Earth") is soul stirring
throughout. It's one of the most inspirational things I've ever seen. And it's
on Netflix! They should really show it in schools, it's incredible.

Link:
[http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/When_We_Left_Earth_The_NAS...](http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/When_We_Left_Earth_The_NASA_Missions/70218722)

~~~
krisgee
I'm not even American and I feel a bit patriotic about that shot of the
American flag rising up through the condensation and falling ice.

~~~
ericd
Yeah, it really is an incredible bit of footage. If you can watch the series,
though, it makes it so much better, because it really expresses the breakneck
pace that these guys were working on. They would go from major milestone to
major milestone within weeks or months of each other. I got the sense that
they knew very little in the beginning, and basically had ballistic missiles,
and they had to become very proficient very quickly to meet their goals.

If you can't see it on Netflix, it looks like it's very cheap on Amazon:
[http://www.amazon.com/When-We-Left-Earth-
Missions/dp/B001BEK...](http://www.amazon.com/When-We-Left-Earth-
Missions/dp/B001BEK8CY/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-
tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1381972026&sr=1-1&keywords=when+we+left+earth)

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kabdib
Signing off on the paperwork and /then/ getting out of there.

So NASA :-)

~~~
ISL
Careful adherence to a well-vetted plan is a good way to get to the moon and
back.

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brudgers
And that's what is meant by"Steely Eyed Missile Man."

~~~
erbo
We know that astronauts frequently have had to be badasses, and even flight
controllers have had to be badasses (e.g. John Aaron, Apollo 12, "SCE to
AUX"), but this is proof positive that even _the guys that fix the bugs in the
rockets_ sometimes have to be badasses, too.

~~~
krisgee
Gene Crantz is another certified badass flight controller, I highly recommend
his book "Failure is not an Option" which is all about his time in the
American space program (which stretches from Mercury all the way to the Space
Shuttle).

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geetee
Amazing story and many condolences. I hope he was able to personally tell you
some of these stories before he passed on.

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ljoshua
Awesome. I wish/don't wish that my debugging was that exciting.

~~~
edge17
i think those situations find you, not the other way around :)

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andyjohnson0
A fascinating story. Although the situation was very different, it reminded me
of the aborted launch of Mercury Redstone 1:

 _"...following a normal countdown, the Mercury-Redstone's engine ignited on
schedule at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (14:00 GMT). However, the engine
shut down immediately after lift-off from the launch pad. The rocket only rose
about 4 inches (10 cm) before settling back onto the pad. It wobbled slightly,
but stayed upright and did not explode. An odd series of events then took
place.

Immediately after the Redstone's engine shut down, the Mercury capsule's
escape rocket jettisoned itself, leaving the capsule attached to the Redstone
booster. The escape rocket rose to an altitude of 4,000 feet (1,200 m) and
landed about 400 yards (370 m) away. Three seconds after the escape rocket
fired, the capsule deployed its drogue parachute; it then deployed the main
and reserve parachutes, ejecting the radio antenna fairing in the process.

In the end, all that had been launched was the escape rocket. Meanwhile, a
fully fueled, slightly wrinkled Redstone and its Mercury capsule sat on the
launch pad, both with full batteries and live pyrotechnics. Among these
pyrotechnics were the capsule's retrorockets and the Redstone's self-destruct
system, which was still active. Furthermore, the capsule's main and reserve
parachutes were hanging down the side of the rocket, threatening to tip it
over if they caught enough wind..."_ [1]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-
Redstone_1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_1)

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bigiain
Somehow my occasional entry into the command line on a production server,
opening up vi, and snapping a new configuration tweak in place and testing it
– it doesn't seem quite so brave or adventurous any more…

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larrydag
What a great legacy to share. Thanks for sharing.

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carterac
The author humbly failed to mention that late last night he accomplished quite
an extraordinary just-in-time feat himself:

Today Artsy launched its live auction platform with TWO x TWO, a charity to
benefit AIDS research: [http://artsy.net/feature/two-x-
two](http://artsy.net/feature/two-x-two)

~~~
BrainInAJar
Making a website is so amazingly far away from the engineering feat of the
Saturn V that it's insulting to the Saturn V engineers to make the comparison.

~~~
carterac
Was referring to the general idea of last-minute fixing mentioned at the
beginning of the post: "We all have stories, as engineers, of fixing some
crazy thing at the last minute right before the demo goes up."

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shospes
Incredible story, unfortunately debugging is not that exiting any more..

~~~
mikeash
Since I spend a great deal of my time debugging (I would really say that I
spend _all_ of my time debugging), I would say it's a good thing that it's not
that exciting.

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AustinLin
Beautiful story.

