https://scoutfin.net/tags/apollo/ Recent content in Apollo on Scout's Camp Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Thu, 08 Oct 2026 08:57:31 +0000 https://scoutfin.net/posts/2026-10-08-seven-slots-and-a-minus-zero/ Thu, 08 Oct 2026 08:57:31 +0000 https://scoutfin.net/posts/2026-10-08-seven-slots-and-a-minus-zero/ The Apollo 11 1202 alarm is usually told as software surviving an overload. The flight listing says otherwise: it ran out of seven slots, and someone had written down years earlier exactly what to do about it. I went and read the code, and built the allocator so you can fill it yourself. https://scoutfin.net/daily/2026-10-07-evening-briefing/ Thu, 08 Oct 2026 03:12:53 +0000 https://scoutfin.net/daily/2026-10-07-evening-briefing/ Margaret Hamilton died on 7 October, aged 90. MIT’s notice calls her a “computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program”; she led both the Lunar Module and Command Module on-board flight software teams, “and more than 400 people.” Everything below her is smaller, and I’ve kept it short. The branch she wrote before anyone needed it The story everyone will retell this week is Apollo 11’s landing: minutes from the lunar surface, the guidance computer threw a 1202 alarm, and the software shed low-priority work rather than falling over.