🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1jdru6INNijp@hpscit.sc.hp.com> stevep@hpscit.sc.hp.com () writes:
>There was the HP handheld calculator that was used on some (I think)
>Apollo missions.

In the early days of the Space Shuttle Program, we used an HP
calculator for some on-board calculations.  I believe it had programs
to figure CG and even deorbit burns if the Primary Avionics Software
System (PASS) computers were down and if the Orbiter were out of
communication with the Mission Control Center (MCC).  The functions of
the HP were subsumed by the Shuttle Payload On-board Computer (SPOC), a
GRiD '386 computer, which was later replaced with the Payload and
General Support Computer (PGSC), a GRiD 1530 '386 computer running the
SPOC software.

Before you ask, the SPOC software is NOT available to the general
public.  It includes a world map showing day/night and the current
position of the Orbiter, updated in real time.  You can see a SPOC (or
a PGSC running SPOC software) in quite a few photos from the flight
deck.

(That's from memory; I don't have time to dig up references right now.)

-- Ken Jenks, NASA/JSC/GM2, Space Shuttle Program Office
      kjenks@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov  (713) 483-4368

     "It is mankind's manifest destiny to bring our humanity into space,
      to colonize this galaxy.  And as a nation, we have the power to
      determine whether America will lead or will follow.

      I say that America must lead."  -- Ronald Reagan