In article <4f7e90f4-216b-4f82-8166-f1855bd08900n@googlegroups.com>,
Butch Malahide <fred.galvin@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 3:37:21 PM UTC-5, Robert Carnegie wrote:

<SNIP! re: "Cold Equations">
>
> I don't know about any "Weird Science" story. I thought the
> precedent for "The Cold Equations" was the 1952 story
> "Precedent" by E. C. Tubb (two years earlier), which you
> can read at the Internet Archive:
> https://archive.org/details/New_Worlds_015v05_1952-05/page/n29/mode/2up
>
> It seems that every fool and his brother can tell us what's
> wrong with Tom Godwin's attempt to write a stowaway-must-die
> story, but they never bother to tell us how they would have
> done it better. Doesn't seem very constructive to me.

Well, I have thought over the matter and my suggested improvement is to
delete all the previous stowaway attempts (and thus the orders to
execute stowaways). Thus, the space liner had procedures to drop off the
shuttles for unscheduled deliveries which had worked up perfectly. An
author contrived interplanetary drive* for the shuttle plus complacency
on the procedures to use the shuttles results in one stowaway doomed to
die.

*the narrow margin has to be an unescapable part of the design.

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com

On 25/04/2022 10.04, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> "Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> writes:
>> On 25/04/2022 08.40, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>> "Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> On 24/04/2022 12.31, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>>
>>>> 2. Nobody used signed-magnitude arithmetic because it's too
>>>> bloody complicated.
>>>
>>> Except Burroughs Medium Systems. First four bits was the
>>> sign, and each successive four bits were the magnitude (up
>>> to 100 digits worth).
>>
>> Four bits for sign? Well, my saying "Nobody used [it]" was
>> obviously wrong, but this only supports "too bloody complicated."
>
> I'd argue that it was simpler in almost every respect than
> either ones or twos-complement (at the expense of requiring
> slightly more storage).

In one's or two's complement, you need pay no attention to the
sign when adding. You simply add bit-by-bit (with end-off or end-around)
and Bob's your uncle. With signed-magnitude, at least as I understand
it, you need separate cases for "one negative", "both negative",
"absolute value of negative less than absolute value of positive",
and so on.

--
Michael F. Stemper
Deuteronomy 24:17

On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 9:43:51 AM UTC-4, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 25/04/2022 08.40, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> > "Michael F. Stemper" <michael...@gmail.com> writes:
> >> On 24/04/2022 12.31, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> >
> >> 2. Nobody used signed-magnitude arithmetic because it's too
> >> bloody complicated.
> >
> > Except Burroughs Medium Systems. First four bits was the
> > sign, and each successive four bits were the magnitude (up
> > to 100 digits worth).
> Four bits for sign? Well, my saying "Nobody used [it]" was
> obviously wrong, but this only supports "too bloody complicated."

Whenever I say things like "Nobody could have possibly used X
because it's too bloody complicated" my robot invariably responds
with "When was the last time you dealt with humans?"

On 4/25/2022 8:23 AM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 24/04/2022 12.31, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>> Neil Armstrong had to manually land the Lunar Lander since the custom
>> CDC 6600 (cut down to 37 bit from 60 bit !) was continuously rebooting
>> on the way down due to division by zero caused by a sensor.
>
> I am extremely skeptical of the idea of word-length being a
> prime number. The CDC 6xxx series had a byte length of six,
> which in the original incarnation would yield 10 six-bit bytes
> in a word.
>
> Cutting that down from 60 bits to 37 bits would give six and
> one-sixth six-bit bytes, which doesn't sound too likely.
>
> One could postulate that it was six six-bit bytes and one
> sign byte, if not for the facts that:
> 1. CDC 6xxx used one's complement arithmetic.
> 2. Nobody used signed-magnitude arithmetic because it's too
> bloody complicated.

It was a cut down CDC 60 bit 6600. The memory was hand wound so they
cut it down to the minimum precision needed. The ultimate weight was 47
lbs if I remember correctly. Every pound was crucial on the Lunar
Lander (see "Cold Equations" story for why).

But there was a sensor fault and the computer kept on rebooting during
the entire descent to the Moon's surface. Neil Armstrong was firing the
retro ? rocket(s?) by hand during the entire descent. We know he did a
good job since he and his fellow astronaut survived.

Lynn

On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 4:30:35 AM UTC-4, Default User wrote:
> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 12:30:14 AM UTC-5, Butch Malahide wrote:
>
> > I don't know about any "Weird Science" story. I thought the
> > precedent for "The Cold Equations" was the 1952 story
> > "Precedent" by E. C. Tubb (two years earlier)
> Apparently "A Weighty Decision" by Al Feldstein in Weird Science, 1952.
>
> The topic is discussed here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations#Similar_concept_in_earlier_stories>
>
>

"Let them infringe on us for a change." - Sheldon Anapol, in
Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay."

https://munraimondi.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/chabon-kavalier-and-clay-min-format.pdf

(p 117 of 269)

--
Kevin R

"Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> writes:
>On 25/04/2022 10.04, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> "Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> writes:
>>> On 25/04/2022 08.40, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>> "Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>> On 24/04/2022 12.31, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> 2. Nobody used signed-magnitude arithmetic because it's too
>>>>> bloody complicated.
>>>>
>>>> Except Burroughs Medium Systems. First four bits was the
>>>> sign, and each successive four bits were the magnitude (up
>>>> to 100 digits worth).
>>>
>>> Four bits for sign? Well, my saying "Nobody used [it]" was
>>> obviously wrong, but this only supports "too bloody complicated."
>>
>> I'd argue that it was simpler in almost every respect than
>> either ones or twos-complement (at the expense of requiring
>> slightly more storage).
>
>In one's or two's complement, you need pay no attention to the
>sign when adding. You simply add bit-by-bit (with end-off or end-around)
>and Bob's your uncle. With signed-magnitude, at least as I understand
>it, you need separate cases for "one negative", "both negative",
>"absolute value of negative less than absolute value of positive",
>and so on.
>

"The processor uses an adder that accumulates two fields from the most significant
to the least significant digit positions. Reverse addition, as incorporated in
the B 2500 and B 3500 systems, has the advantage of detecting an overflow condition
prior to altering the receiving field for the result. If the data fields are
signed, sign manipulation takes place prior to the addition since they are the
most significant digits".
pp. 5-10 through 5-12 (pdf pg. 51-52) 1025475_B2500_B3500_RefMan_Oct69.pdf
(available on bitsavers.org).

The hardware implements subtraction using 9s-complement addition (just like the old
mechanical Burroughs adding machines did) - it chooses whether to add or subtract
based on the signs of both operands and whether it is a ADD or SUB instruction.

/* Looks ok, read up the signs (if present) and decide if we
* are doing an addition or subtraction. If the signs are the
* same we are adding, if they are different we are subtracting.
*
* We do subtraction by 9's complement addition. We do not
* necessarily complement the negative number. Instead we
* complement the number with the smaller magnitude. This
* saves us from ever having to do a recomplement cycle.
*
* We do all arithmetic from left to right, rather than right
* to left as one might normally expect. This results in some
* interesting aspects to the algorithms. For a complete
* treatise on the subject, the reader is referred to the
* Burroughs B4700 MS-1 Processor Technical Manual, form
* number 1054988. The algorithms used here almost exactly
* implement the method therein described; the only notable
* differences having to do with optimization of memory accesses.

On 4/24/2022 3:24 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Apr 2022 12:53:13 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
> <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>> On Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 2:03:31 AM UTC-6, David Johnston wrote:
>>
>>> The Dead Past by Isaac Asimov: My reaction was "Ehn. We'll get used to
>>> it.". Just as we got used to surveillance cameras and having our
>>> internet activity monitored.
>>
>> Since what Asimov was talking about meant no privacy at all for anyone
>> ever, I didn't see _this_ as the objection. That they would have found another
>> way - like controlling the distribution of some critical substance or component,
>> instead of radically altering how academe works so as to inhibit further
>> technical progress, though is where I objected.
>>
>>> Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein: Nope. Can't buy that they
>>> could keep the civilians as second class citizens without cultivating
>>> contempt for them.
>>
>> I never really thought too much about that aspect of it. Apparently,
>> democracy failed, and so they tried to preserve something as close
>> to democracy as possible.
>
> It's a democracy. _Anybody_ can get the vote. They just have to (a)
> want it badly enough, (b) be able to understand the rules, (c) show
> that they are capable of following them, and (d) be lucky enough to
> not die in the process.
>
>>> Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke: Nope. That's not humanity
>>> ascending to the heavens. The discontinuity is too drastic. It's just
>>> humanity dying out and leaving behind god food to be harvested.
>>
>> I didn't relate well to much of that book, unlike most Clarke, but
>> that wasn't the flaw I percieved.
>>
>>> The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin: The margins can't be that tight.
>>> They'd be dying all the time
>>
>> Others have already pointed out that it's really the juxtaposition of
>> lax security and tight margins that's odd. But, yes, the margins were
>> ridiculously tight in themselves.
>> I think, though, that here and in "The Dead Past", the author set up a
>> contrived situation in order to allow the plot he envisaged to happen.
>> I can't blame authors for that, a lot of science fiction is that way.
>
> And the margins in spaceflight are generally on the acceleration end.
> Aerobraking doesn't really require that much onboard resource.

Areobraking only works if a) there is an atmosphere of substance and b)
the last portion of the descent must have some sort of braking, retro
rocket to land vertically or landing horizontally and the wheels have
brakes and possibly a parachute.

Lynn

On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 10:02:35 -0700, Robert Woodward wrote:

> In article <4f7e90f4-216b-4f82-8166-f1855bd08900n@googlegroups.com>,
> Butch Malahide <fred.galvin@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 3:37:21 PM UTC-5, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>
>
> <SNIP! re: "Cold Equations">
>>
>> I don't know about any "Weird Science" story. I thought the precedent
>> for "The Cold Equations" was the 1952 story "Precedent" by E. C. Tubb
>> (two years earlier), which you can read at the Internet Archive:
>> https://archive.org/details/New_Worlds_015v05_1952-05/page/n29/mode/2up
>>
>> It seems that every fool and his brother can tell us what's wrong with
>> Tom Godwin's attempt to write a stowaway-must-die story, but they never
>> bother to tell us how they would have done it better. Doesn't seem very
>> constructive to me.
>
> Well, I have thought over the matter and my suggested improvement is to
> delete all the previous stowaway attempts (and thus the orders to
> execute stowaways). Thus, the space liner had procedures to drop off the
> shuttles for unscheduled deliveries which had worked up perfectly. An
> author contrived interplanetary drive* for the shuttle plus complacency
> on the procedures to use the shuttles results in one stowaway doomed to
> die.
>
> *the narrow margin has to be an unescapable part of the design.

Another way to look at it is that "fault" really does not matter in the
end. It is the designers' fault,it is the starline's fault,it is the
pilot's fault or it is the stowaway's it still ends up the same way. My
take away always was that emotions or fault or intentions had no effect
on physics.

Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
>On 4/25/2022 8:23 AM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>> On 24/04/2022 12.31, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>
>>> Neil Armstrong had to manually land the Lunar Lander since the custom
>>> CDC 6600 (cut down to 37 bit from 60 bit !) was continuously rebooting
>>> on the way down due to division by zero caused by a sensor.
>>
>> I am extremely skeptical of the idea of word-length being a
>> prime number. The CDC 6xxx series had a byte length of six,
>> which in the original incarnation would yield 10 six-bit bytes
>> in a word.
>>
>> Cutting that down from 60 bits to 37 bits would give six and
>> one-sixth six-bit bytes, which doesn't sound too likely.
>>
>> One could postulate that it was six six-bit bytes and one
>> sign byte, if not for the facts that:
>> 1. CDC 6xxx used one's complement arithmetic.
>> 2. Nobody used signed-magnitude arithmetic because it's too
>> bloody complicated.
>
>It was a cut down CDC 60 bit 6600. The memory was hand wound so they
>cut it down to the minimum precision needed. The ultimate weight was 47
>lbs if I remember correctly. Every pound was crucial on the Lunar
>Lander (see "Cold Equations" story for why).

I think you have conflated the fact that there was a game program
on the CDC6600 called "lunar lander" with the apollo guidance
computer (which was not a CDC 6600, cut down or otherwise).

On 4/25/2022 11:50 AM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> On 4/25/2022 8:23 AM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>> On 24/04/2022 12.31, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>
>>> Neil Armstrong had to manually land the Lunar Lander since the custom
>>> CDC 6600 (cut down to 37 bit from 60 bit !) was continuously
>>> rebooting on the way down due to division by zero caused by a sensor.
>>
>> I am extremely skeptical of the idea of word-length being a
>> prime number. The CDC 6xxx series had a byte length of six,
>> which in the original incarnation would yield 10 six-bit bytes
>> in a word.
>>
>> Cutting that down from 60 bits to 37 bits would give six and
>> one-sixth six-bit bytes, which doesn't sound too likely.
>>
>> One could postulate that it was six six-bit bytes and one
>> sign byte, if not for the facts that:
>> 1. CDC 6xxx used one's complement arithmetic.
>> 2. Nobody used signed-magnitude arithmetic because it's too
>> bloody complicated.
>
> It was a cut down CDC 60 bit 6600.  The memory was hand wound so they
> cut it down to the minimum precision needed.  The ultimate weight was 47
> lbs if I remember correctly.  Every pound was crucial on the Lunar
> Lander (see "Cold Equations" story for why).
>
> But there was a sensor fault and the computer kept on rebooting during
> the entire descent to the Moon's surface.  Neil Armstrong was firing the
> retro ? rocket(s?) by hand during the entire descent.  We know he did a
> good job since he and his fellow astronaut survived.
>
There were also extraneous routines running that were causing a lot of
the error messages because they were lower priority and kept aborting
because of lack of resources and throwing up errors as a result.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 7:23:58 AM UTC-6, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 24/04/2022 12.31, Lynn McGuire wrote:

> > Neil Armstrong had to manually land the Lunar Lander since the custom CDC
> > 6600 (cut down to 37 bit from 60 bit !) was continuously rebooting on the way
> > down due to division by zero caused by a sensor.

> I am extremely skeptical of the idea of word-length being a
> prime number. The CDC 6xxx series had a byte length of six,
> which in the original incarnation would yield 10 six-bit bytes
> in a word.

> Cutting that down from 60 bits to 37 bits would give six and
> one-sixth six-bit bytes, which doesn't sound too likely.

I don't see how that could be a problem. The computer used in the Lunar
Lander was a special-purpose computer, so it had to have the numeric
precision it needed for performing its one task... it did not need to be
efficient at handling character data.

I presume the memory holding the program code was still 60 bits wide,
so that they didn't have to radically change the instruction format.

John Savard

On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 7:57:00 AM UTC-6, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <619b07b1-6a8c-4027...@googlegroups.com>,
> Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> >On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 7:31:59 PM UTC-6, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >> In article <287f57a1-a19d-44f2...@googlegroups.com>,
> >> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> >> >On Monday, 25 April 2022 at 00:26:59 UTC+1, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >> >> In article <1ac42207-836e-430b...@googlegroups.com>,
> >> >> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> >
> >> >> >Regarding perception, I'm not the only person to be fooled
> >> >> >by - as it were - Rudyard Kipling's heroine Helen Turrell
> >> >> >in "The Gardener",
> >> >> ><https://greatwar.nl/books/gardener/gardener.html>
> >
> >> >> Oh, that's a zinger of an ending. One wants to read another half
> >> >> page and see how it came out ... but Kipling knew what he was
> >> >> doing.
> >
> >> >Well, I take it that she was directed to the place that
> >> >she was trying to find, and that page is missing in the
> >> >story because Kipling didn't write it out. And then
> >> >she goes home.
> >
> >> He didn't need to write it out. She wouldn't have left without
> >> having found the grave. And he didn't need to hit the reader
> >> over the head with who the gardener was.
> >
> >I wasn't expecting anything more to happen after the ending...
> >I presume the gardener was actually the gravedigger, and the
> >story was about how much sadness is endured because of war.
> That, too. If you can lay hand on a Bible, read chapter 20 of
> the Gospel of John, in which Mary Magdalene finds the tomb of
> Jesus open and empty. He appears to her, but she doesn't
> recognize him; she thinks he is the gardener and asks him, if he
> has taken away the body of Jesus, to tell her where it is so that
> she may take it away. He calls her by name, and she recognizes
> him.
>
> Now, you may believe that never happened. I don't know if
> Kipling did either. But every reader of the story at the time of
> publication would have heard it read out at least once a year.
> "She's looking for a grave, someone finds it for her, she thinks
> he's the gardener."
>
> I have just hit you over the head with who the gardener is.

Oh, the ghost of her nephew for whose grave she was looking.

All right.

John Savard

On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 10:25:43 AM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Michael F. Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> schrieb:

> > 2. Nobody used signed-magnitude arithmetic because it's too
> > bloody complicated.

> The IBM 701 did, plus its successors like the IBM 704. The first
> FORTRAN compiler was written for a sign-magnitude machine!

And so did the DDP-24, DDP-124, and DDP-224 computers from the
Computer Controls Company, later purchased by Honeywell. They
even made the fact that they had proper sign-magnitude arithmetic,
instead of (shudder) that cheapo two's complement stuff, or that
halfway imitation one's complement, a component of their advertising!

John Savard

On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 7:43:51 AM UTC-6, Michael F. Stemper wrote:

> Four bits for sign? Well, my saying "Nobody used [it]" was
> obviously wrong, but this only supports "too bloody complicated."

Oh, _those_ computers. But I thought they were by Honeywell.

48-bit word, and the reason they used four bits for sign in binary
integers was because they didn't need all that precision, and they
wanted to keep things working the same way as for packed decimal,
which they also used the 48-bit word for.

I'm thinking of the Datamatic 1000 and the Honeywell 600.

John Savard

On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 1:51:35 PM UTC-6, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> I think you have conflated the fact that there was a game program
> on the CDC6600 called "lunar lander" with the apollo guidance
> computer (which was not a CDC 6600, cut down or otherwise).

The Apollo Guidance Computer had a word length of 15 bits (plus
one parity bit). But it was used in the Lunar Module as well as the
Command Module.

I can't find anything about another computer, with 37-bit words,
used in Apollo spacecraft. The only result I found with a Google
search was the computer in the 1ESS - the original electronic
crossbar switchboard by Bell.

John Savard

On 4/25/2022 2:45 PM, Magewolf wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 10:02:35 -0700, Robert Woodward wrote:
>
>> In article <4f7e90f4-216b-4f82-8166-f1855bd08900n@googlegroups.com>,
>> Butch Malahide <fred.galvin@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 3:37:21 PM UTC-5, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>>
>>
>> <SNIP! re: "Cold Equations">
>>>
>>> I don't know about any "Weird Science" story. I thought the precedent
>>> for "The Cold Equations" was the 1952 story "Precedent" by E. C. Tubb
>>> (two years earlier), which you can read at the Internet Archive:
>>> https://archive.org/details/New_Worlds_015v05_1952-05/page/n29/mode/2up
>>>
>>> It seems that every fool and his brother can tell us what's wrong with
>>> Tom Godwin's attempt to write a stowaway-must-die story, but they never
>>> bother to tell us how they would have done it better. Doesn't seem very
>>> constructive to me.
>>
>> Well, I have thought over the matter and my suggested improvement is to
>> delete all the previous stowaway attempts (and thus the orders to
>> execute stowaways). Thus, the space liner had procedures to drop off the
>> shuttles for unscheduled deliveries which had worked up perfectly. An
>> author contrived interplanetary drive* for the shuttle plus complacency
>> on the procedures to use the shuttles results in one stowaway doomed to
>> die.
>>
>> *the narrow margin has to be an unescapable part of the design.
>
> Another way to look at it is that "fault" really does not matter in the
> end. It is the designers' fault,it is the starline's fault,it is the
> pilot's fault or it is the stowaway's it still ends up the same way. My
> take away always was that emotions or fault or intentions had no effect
> on physics.

After rereading the story, I have suddenly realized that the EDS was a
one shot. It would forever be a part of wherever it landed as it did
not have the fuel for takeoff. They were throwaway ships just landing
on the target planet and would be discarded once the pilot and the cargo
left the EDS.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-
equations/

"Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency
occurred on a world not scheduled for a visit had been needed, and the
Emergency Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible,
they occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light
metal and plastics, they were driven by a small rocket drive that
consumed relatively little fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDSs, and
when a call for aid was received, the nearest cruiser would drop into
normal space long enough to launch an EDS with the needed supplies or
personnel, then vanish again as it continued on its course."

If the EDS carried extra fuel then it could be too heavy to land properly.

Lynn

Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> schrieb:
> On 4/23/2022 3:03 AM, David Johnston wrote:
>> For me:
> ...
>> The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin:  The margins can't be that tight.
>> They'd be dying all the time
>
> All of the Apollo flights going around the Moon and landing on the Moon
> had incredibly tight tolerances. There were contingencies at every
> stage where NASA was prepared to announce to the public that one or more
> of the astronauts were dead.
>
> Neil Armstrong had to manually land the Lunar Lander since the custom
> CDC 6600 (cut down to 37 bit from 60 bit !)

37 bit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer gives it
as 16 (15 + 1 parity bit) (and a CDC6600 had nothing to do with
it).

The AGC is interesting because its logic was built up exclusively
from transistorized NOR gates.

On 4/25/2022 2:51 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
>> On 4/25/2022 8:23 AM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>>> On 24/04/2022 12.31, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>>
>>>> Neil Armstrong had to manually land the Lunar Lander since the custom
>>>> CDC 6600 (cut down to 37 bit from 60 bit !) was continuously rebooting
>>>> on the way down due to division by zero caused by a sensor.
>>>
>>> I am extremely skeptical of the idea of word-length being a
>>> prime number. The CDC 6xxx series had a byte length of six,
>>> which in the original incarnation would yield 10 six-bit bytes
>>> in a word.
>>>
>>> Cutting that down from 60 bits to 37 bits would give six and
>>> one-sixth six-bit bytes, which doesn't sound too likely.
>>>
>>> One could postulate that it was six six-bit bytes and one
>>> sign byte, if not for the facts that:
>>> 1. CDC 6xxx used one's complement arithmetic.
>>> 2. Nobody used signed-magnitude arithmetic because it's too
>>> bloody complicated.
>>
>> It was a cut down CDC 60 bit 6600. The memory was hand wound so they
>> cut it down to the minimum precision needed. The ultimate weight was 47
>> lbs if I remember correctly. Every pound was crucial on the Lunar
>> Lander (see "Cold Equations" story for why).
>
> I think you have conflated the fact that there was a game program
> on the CDC6600 called "lunar lander" with the apollo guidance
> computer (which was not a CDC 6600, cut down or otherwise).

I looked and did not find the story I read several years ago about the
37 bit computer.

Lynn

On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 2:58:31 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:

> I can't find anything about another computer, with 37-bit words,
> used in Apollo spacecraft. The only result I found with a Google
> search was the computer in the 1ESS - the original electronic
> crossbar switchboard by Bell.

In further searching on Google, I found some additional cases
of a computer with a 37-bit word.

The Soviet Minsk-2 and Minsk-22 computers had a 37-bit word.

The Sylvania 9400 computer had a 37-bit word. While the first bit
was used as the sign bit for numbers, it was unused for instruction
bits.

In an oral history document from Control Data, it was noted that a
modified version of the 12-bit Control Data 160 computer, called the
160G, had a 13th bit added that extended the instruction repertoire.

It was mentioned in passing that modified IBM 7090 computers were
also made with a 37th bit to allow extra instructions, embodying the
same principle.

John Savard

Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency
> occurred on a world not scheduled for a visit had been needed, and the
> Emergency Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible,
> they occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light
> metal and plastics, they were driven by a small rocket drive that
> consumed relatively little fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDSs, and
> when a call for aid was received, the nearest cruiser would drop into
> normal space long enough to launch an EDS with the needed supplies or
> personnel, then vanish again as it continued on its course."
>
> If the EDS carried extra fuel then it could be too heavy to land properly.
>

It seems kinda silly to build a supply ship that can't actually carry any
supplies, though.

--
Leif Roar Moldskred

On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:55:09 PM UTC-6, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > If the EDS carried extra fuel then it could be too heavy to land properly.

> It seems kinda silly to build a supply ship that can't actually carry any
> supplies, though.

Obviously, the sentence should be corrected, then, to:

If the EDS, _when carrying a full load of supplies_, also carried extra fuel,
then it would be too heavy to land properly.

If it had only a half load of supplies, it would still be able to land properly with
extra fuel weighing as much as the other half of a load of supplies.

John Savard

Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
> Obviously, the sentence should be corrected, then, to:
>
> If the EDS, _when carrying a full load of supplies_, also carried extra fuel,
> then it would be too heavy to land properly.
>

The extra fuel doesn't factor into the landing, as it would have been spent at
that point. No, if a delta of 60 kilogram makes a practical difference, then the
ship can't be carrying anything actually resembling a load of supplies.

--
Leif Roar Moldskred

On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 16:07:18 -0500, Lynn McGuire
<lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 4/25/2022 2:45 PM, Magewolf wrote:
>> On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 10:02:35 -0700, Robert Woodward wrote:
>>
>>> In article <4f7e90f4-216b-4f82-8166-f1855bd08900n@googlegroups.com>,
>>> Butch Malahide <fred.galvin@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 3:37:21 PM UTC-5, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> <SNIP! re: "Cold Equations">
>>>>
>>>> I don't know about any "Weird Science" story. I thought the precedent
>>>> for "The Cold Equations" was the 1952 story "Precedent" by E. C. Tubb
>>>> (two years earlier), which you can read at the Internet Archive:
>>>> https://archive.org/details/New_Worlds_015v05_1952-05/page/n29/mode/2up
>>>>
>>>> It seems that every fool and his brother can tell us what's wrong with
>>>> Tom Godwin's attempt to write a stowaway-must-die story, but they never
>>>> bother to tell us how they would have done it better. Doesn't seem very
>>>> constructive to me.
>>>
>>> Well, I have thought over the matter and my suggested improvement is to
>>> delete all the previous stowaway attempts (and thus the orders to
>>> execute stowaways). Thus, the space liner had procedures to drop off the
>>> shuttles for unscheduled deliveries which had worked up perfectly. An
>>> author contrived interplanetary drive* for the shuttle plus complacency
>>> on the procedures to use the shuttles results in one stowaway doomed to
>>> die.
>>>
>>> *the narrow margin has to be an unescapable part of the design.
>>
>> Another way to look at it is that "fault" really does not matter in the
>> end. It is the designers' fault,it is the starline's fault,it is the
>> pilot's fault or it is the stowaway's it still ends up the same way. My
>> take away always was that emotions or fault or intentions had no effect
>> on physics.
>
>After rereading the story, I have suddenly realized that the EDS was a
>one shot. It would forever be a part of wherever it landed as it did
>not have the fuel for takeoff. They were throwaway ships just landing
>on the target planet and would be discarded once the pilot and the cargo
>left the EDS.
> https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-
>equations/
>
>"Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency
>occurred on a world not scheduled for a visit had been needed, and the
>Emergency Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible,
>they occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light
>metal and plastics, they were driven by a small rocket drive that
>consumed relatively little fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDSs, and
>when a call for aid was received, the nearest cruiser would drop into
>normal space long enough to launch an EDS with the needed supplies or
>personnel, then vanish again as it continued on its course."
>
>If the EDS carried extra fuel then it could be too heavy to land properly.

I'm sorry, but the numbers in that story just make no sense at all.
There's not enough information given to model it, but it's all
armwavium.

He's going to a planet with an atmosphere. Fuel is in short supply.
But they'd rather waste this limited supply of fuel than provide a
heat shield and parachutes that would cut the amount of fuel required
significantly.

Then there's that whole business of running at .1 g for two hours on
chemical rockets. That's a quite wide throttle range and it's
difficult to believe that they would be as efficient throttled back
that far as at their design thrust, so again he's wasting this
precious commodity of fuel.

It's craptastic engineering at its finest.

On 4/25/2022 5:44 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 16:07:18 -0500, Lynn McGuire
> <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 4/25/2022 2:45 PM, Magewolf wrote:
>>> On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 10:02:35 -0700, Robert Woodward wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article <4f7e90f4-216b-4f82-8166-f1855bd08900n@googlegroups.com>,
>>>> Butch Malahide <fred.galvin@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 3:37:21 PM UTC-5, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <SNIP! re: "Cold Equations">
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't know about any "Weird Science" story. I thought the precedent
>>>>> for "The Cold Equations" was the 1952 story "Precedent" by E. C. Tubb
>>>>> (two years earlier), which you can read at the Internet Archive:
>>>>> https://archive.org/details/New_Worlds_015v05_1952-05/page/n29/mode/2up
>>>>>
>>>>> It seems that every fool and his brother can tell us what's wrong with
>>>>> Tom Godwin's attempt to write a stowaway-must-die story, but they never
>>>>> bother to tell us how they would have done it better. Doesn't seem very
>>>>> constructive to me.
>>>>
>>>> Well, I have thought over the matter and my suggested improvement is to
>>>> delete all the previous stowaway attempts (and thus the orders to
>>>> execute stowaways). Thus, the space liner had procedures to drop off the
>>>> shuttles for unscheduled deliveries which had worked up perfectly. An
>>>> author contrived interplanetary drive* for the shuttle plus complacency
>>>> on the procedures to use the shuttles results in one stowaway doomed to
>>>> die.
>>>>
>>>> *the narrow margin has to be an unescapable part of the design.
>>>
>>> Another way to look at it is that "fault" really does not matter in the
>>> end. It is the designers' fault,it is the starline's fault,it is the
>>> pilot's fault or it is the stowaway's it still ends up the same way. My
>>> take away always was that emotions or fault or intentions had no effect
>>> on physics.
>>
>> After rereading the story, I have suddenly realized that the EDS was a
>> one shot. It would forever be a part of wherever it landed as it did
>> not have the fuel for takeoff. They were throwaway ships just landing
>> on the target planet and would be discarded once the pilot and the cargo
>> left the EDS.
>> https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-
>> equations/
>>
>> "Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency
>> occurred on a world not scheduled for a visit had been needed, and the
>> Emergency Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible,
>> they occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light
>> metal and plastics, they were driven by a small rocket drive that
>> consumed relatively little fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDSs, and
>> when a call for aid was received, the nearest cruiser would drop into
>> normal space long enough to launch an EDS with the needed supplies or
>> personnel, then vanish again as it continued on its course."
>>
>> If the EDS carried extra fuel then it could be too heavy to land properly.
>
> I'm sorry, but the numbers in that story just make no sense at all.
> There's not enough information given to model it, but it's all
> armwavium.
>
> He's going to a planet with an atmosphere. Fuel is in short supply.
> But they'd rather waste this limited supply of fuel than provide a
> heat shield and parachutes that would cut the amount of fuel required
> significantly.
>
> Then there's that whole business of running at .1 g for two hours on
> chemical rockets. That's a quite wide throttle range and it's
> difficult to believe that they would be as efficient throttled back
> that far as at their design thrust, so again he's wasting this
> precious commodity of fuel.
>
> It's craptastic engineering at its finest.

He is having to slow down with that 0.1 g. The space liner had a high
delta V coming out of FTL.

If the EDS is collapsible, then it probably does not weigh very much.
Maybe only a couple of hundred lbs. Like I said, a one shot space ship,
not much to it.

Lynn

On Monday, 25 April 2022 at 21:38:58 UTC+1, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 7:57:00 AM UTC-6, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> > In article <619b07b1-6a8c-4027...@googlegroups.com>,
> > Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> > >On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 7:31:59 PM UTC-6, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> > >> In article <287f57a1-a19d-44f2...@googlegroups.com>,
> > >> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> > >> >On Monday, 25 April 2022 at 00:26:59 UTC+1, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> > >> >> In article <1ac42207-836e-430b...@googlegroups.com>,
> > >> >> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> >> >Regarding perception, I'm not the only person to be fooled
> > >> >> >by - as it were - Rudyard Kipling's heroine Helen Turrell
> > >> >> >in "The Gardener",
> > >> >> ><https://greatwar.nl/books/gardener/gardener.html>
> > >
> > >> >> Oh, that's a zinger of an ending. One wants to read another half
> > >> >> page and see how it came out ... but Kipling knew what he was
> > >> >> doing.
> > >
> > >> >Well, I take it that she was directed to the place that
> > >> >she was trying to find, and that page is missing in the
> > >> >story because Kipling didn't write it out. And then
> > >> >she goes home.
> > >
> > >> He didn't need to write it out. She wouldn't have left without
> > >> having found the grave. And he didn't need to hit the reader
> > >> over the head with who the gardener was.
> > >
> > >I wasn't expecting anything more to happen after the ending...
> > >I presume the gardener was actually the gravedigger, and the
> > >story was about how much sadness is endured because of war.
> > That, too. If you can lay hand on a Bible, read chapter 20 of
> > the Gospel of John, in which Mary Magdalene finds the tomb of
> > Jesus open and empty. He appears to her, but she doesn't
> > recognize him; she thinks he is the gardener and asks him, if he
> > has taken away the body of Jesus, to tell her where it is so that
> > she may take it away. He calls her by name, and she recognizes
> > him.
> >
> > Now, you may believe that never happened. I don't know if
> > Kipling did either. But every reader of the story at the time of
> > publication would have heard it read out at least once a year.
> > "She's looking for a grave, someone finds it for her, she thinks
> > he's the gardener."
> >
> > I have just hit you over the head with who the gardener is.
> Oh, the ghost of her nephew for whose grave she was looking.
>
> All right.

Are you thinking of John 19:26? No... realistically,
it's more likely that this is a grounds keeper than that
it is Jesus Christ or an angel on a pastoral visit to Earth
for Helen's benefit. I don't know if what he's working at
has particular significance amongst the war graves.

I think Kipling didn't exclude a god dropping in in his
"Just So Stories", but it's odd here. Helen is satisfied that
the man is a gardener. Kipling seems to want us to
doubt it.

It's magic realism. Although Kipling or Lewis Carroll
might be horrified at this news.