Apollo 11 - The Owners' Workshop Manual DIY vehicle maintenance publisher par excellence Haynes has agreeably decided to mark the forthcoming 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing by releasing a commemorative Apollo 11 Owners' Workshop Manual. The Haynes Apollo owners' workshop manual Of course, the book doesn't actually invite you to wander down to the …
I still have my Haynes Manual for my old '68 Beetle somewhere. Long after I gave the car away (why? why? why did I DO that?) I still get a nostalgic lift from the oily photos and exploded diagrams...
Never had an Apollo 11 lunar module, but I imagine people who do will enjoy this...
The airtight one at the back there. With the helmet.
That's just a picture that looks like a Haynes manual with a Lunar Lander on it! If you hold it sideways and squint, you can see the pixel effects where the inconsistant images were stiched together and I won't even go into the obvious errors in the lighting effects.
There is no real manual and there never was, you read it here first. Any actual manuals you may see on the bookshelves in Halfords are a product of Orbital Mind Control lasers trained on you by the CIA......
Had no maintenance requirements - it couldn't even be tested, the first firing for each ascent rocket was on/near the moon (think 10 and 13)
The propellants were so corrosive that they basically destroyed the rocket bell when fired - one shot rockets don't have much call for maintenance...
Damn, this makes me feel old. I remember sitting up with my grandparents to watch it take place. 40 years ago though - by now we should be having the first Mars landings.
On an aside, I note that el Reg is changing our names - I am not a number so I've chnaged the handle. Did you you announce that you were doing this guys, because I don't remeber seeing anything about it. (But then at my advanced age, I may well have missed it)
Mines the one with large backpack and helmet
Bravo Haynes!
Remember those cold drizzly Sunday afternoons in October, racing against fading light to loosen some rusted up bolts on a Mark 2 Cortina or similar.
By comparison fixing your Apollo 11 will be a doddle - no rain, no rust, 2 weeks unbroken daylight.
When it was all fields around here I watched the Apollo 11 mission on a black and white telly at my primary school in Kampala. I know we've got the interwebs and mobiles phones and what not now, but back then I really thought that we'd be zooming around in hover cars and going on our hols to Mars by now.
What happened?
I still reckon that those guys from the Apollo missions and even the new guys and gals fixing the Hubble have balls of steel. I know nobody in IT who isn't in awe of the planning and execution of their remote IT support.
>"Given that most of the lander is still in situ on the Moon, and most of the rocket burned up in the athmosphere, it would appear that this is the one Haynes manual where reassembly is not the reverse of disassembly."
Reassembly is still the reverse of disassembly, it's just that unlike most Haines manuals the procedure in this one /starts/ with the reassembly and /ends/ with the disassembly.... and then you leave it disassembled forever.
I hate the Haynes manuals! They always seem to assume that you know some part of the procedure that I just don't know. That and they usually cover such a broad range of associated cars that they border on useless.
Now if Chiltons or Bentley Publishers put it out I would fly directly to the shop to pick up a copy.
Both the Haynes and Chiltons books drive me nuts. For example my car had significant drivetrain change while still in the same body style. 1993 to 2003 is one body. 1998 through 2003 has a new drivetrain. The books don't mention that and go on the idea that they're same.
Some things read simply. Steps 1 through 5 indicate taking a few things apart. Should be a piece of cake, they are a total of 5 lines. Nope. Item 3 is a 6 hour process where they haven't documented what has to be done to accomplish it.
Sometimes they're simply off. For example, change the fuel pump. It's in the fuel tank. Remove the exhaust, loosen a few bolts, and detach the tank. No problem. They forgot to mention raising the car high in the air, and disconnecting the entire rear suspension, rear wheels, and setting the axle on the ground. That was the only way to get enough clearance to do it. Option #2 found online is easier. Cut a hatch in the trunk (boot), swap the pump, and seal it up. The first option is an all-day project. The second option took about 20 minutes.
Thankfully, the Apollo 11 book won't be used by anyone in a pinch. :)
...although I don't think I am ever going to be present at a Saturn V launch now which is one of my few ambitions. Apparently it makes a shuttle launch look tame, even if the thrust levels are similar. Something to do with the low frequency vibration from the pumps in the S-1B.
Anyone else remember James Burke's explanation of craters on the moon where he poured different colour (even on 405 line B&W TV!!) sand into a tray in layers and then bunged in a big stone with the result that he had a crater that looked exactly like many on the moon?
The moon landings are still our species' most impressive achievement (listen conspiracy theorists, we went there OK?), and all done with computing power that these days would run your fridge or washing machine. There really were some engineers with vision then....
40 years ago they flew in a bucket of assorted nuts and bolts to the moon. With a program memory of 4K...
39 yearts ago they started developing the space shuttle. those computers had a whopping 16k ...
Fast forward to 2009. Modern programmers can't even write a friggin bootloader that is smaller than a couple of hundred K anymore ... The os takes 20 seconds to boot at 3 GHz and is full of security holes, inconsistencies and goes tits up if a fly sneezes in the vicinity.
Those machines ran with 4K ram, were fully multitasking and hade ZERO security holes or bugs. ( and they were wirewrapped ). Boot time was inexistent. Apply power and 2 clockticks later it was ready to run.
I can't shake the notion humankind is actually devolving....
Mine's the white one with the Eagle mission patch on the left shoulder and all the plumbing holes in the front. Oh and the helmet with golden visor is mine too
>Those machines ran with 4K ram, were fully multitasking and hade ZERO security holes or bugs. ( and they were wirewrapped ). Boot time was inexistent. Apply power and 2 clockticks later it was ready to run.
Erm ... didn't they get numerous 1202 Program Alarms.on approaching the surface causing Armstrong to put the Lander down manually ?
@Tony Humphreys
"Is there a full wiring guide to the rope memory?"
Go find a book called "Digital Apollo" - it has a section on the rope memory, programming and assembly.
@John Robson
"The propellants were so corrosive that they basically destroyed the rocket bell when fired"
It had nothing to do with the corrosiveness of the propellants. The engine bell of the LM engines had an ablative internal coating to protect them from the heat/force of the combustion which was designed to burn away during engine firing. The same principle applied to the re-entry heat shield of the Command Module.
"I hate the Haynes manuals! They always seem to assume that you know some part of the procedure that I just don't know. That and they usually cover such a broad range of associated cars that they border on useless."
Or perhaps it's that you border on useless. I've never had a problem with Haynes, Auto data or even those dodgy translations from the Japanese found in some factory workshop manuals particularly during the sixties and seventies. *
Cars generally are big complicated machines made up of lots of small simple things. Remember that and you won't go far wrong.
* Remember to always "Avoid entanglement of dog with wheel spokes"
Bloody excellent idea, Haynes. One to remember. I'll buy.
Actually, another to remember is the day my mate and I were under his Morris Marina, whipping out the gearbox to change the synchro rings. Should've used 'precision' tools but we got by with a few spanners, etc. from Halfords. Thanks to Haynes, we did it! Ran for years after, but of course with a Morris Marina, you'd wish it didn't.
Nothing!
We've killer squirrels here in Finland.
(www.hs.fi) <<A squirrel scampered into the bicycle wheel of an unlucky Finnish opera singer, causing him to fall, knock himself out and break his nose just ahead of the world premiere of a new opera.
Esa Ruuttunen was pedalling his way to the Helsinki Opera House last month when the squirrel ran into his spokes.
The singer ended up concussed and in a local hospital, rather than at his rehearsals for the Finnish opera Kaarmeen hetki (Hour of the Serpent), which opens on September 15.
"He is not yet singing in rehearsals, but thinks he will be able to perform at the world premiere," Finnish National Opera spokeswoman Heidi Almi told Reuters.
The squirrel died in the accident.>>
(What that's got to do with Apollo-11 or IT beats the fuc*k outta me, but it probably won't get moderated until Friday, so that's OK.)
Not only did they have errors come from the guidance computer on landing, but the meaning of those errors wasn't actually documented anywhere. So the guys running the mission made the "command decision" that if the errors came less often than twice a minute, they'd carry on.
To summarise: The hardware engineers were so pushed for time that prototype hardware ended up becoming the production version. The software engineers wrote code with major bugs in it, and failed to write any relevant documentation. The end customer found one of those bugs at the worst possible time for everyone. And the managers made a random decision with no basis in engineering knowledge.
So it's nothing at all like engineering today. Oh wait...
And FWIW Vincent, you might want to compare oranges with oranges. Say, compare a car ABS system with the Apollo guidance software. Embedded software has a massive raft of experience in making sure "Error 1201" doesn't happen on your car's ABS (or defibrillator, or other safety-related kit). Trouble is that it's expensive, and you get what you pay for.
"Erm ... didn't they get numerous 1202 Program Alarms.on approaching the surface causing Armstrong to put the Lander down manually ?"
the 1202 alarm was the computer advising the crew that it had lowered priority of some background tasks, or shut them down, to allow for the speed in which the data from radar was coming in... this ws because the operator had forgot to shut down some stuff manualy...
again another PEBKAC....
mines the one with the flame proof layer...
So what if they always used it? Very useful it is too. If you don't have access to some form of mixture analyzer or a wide band lamda sensor a plug chop is still the best way of checking your mixture is in the right ballpark.
Under the picture of the badly burned plug does the caption read "Houston, we have a problem."?
Oh and even if you do manage to avoid entangling a dog in your spokes it's always a good idea to "go soothingly on the grease mud, for therein lurks the skid demon."
People who talk about the Moon landings as a trick, a hoax or a conspiracy, even as a jest, shal have their geek licenses revoked, that's K-I-L-L-E-D 'revoked' (for those who recognise the authority of the Dolmen-Saxel Shoe Corporation).
Seriously.
internet nut-jobs, crazy dog people, audiophiles all get enough so-called credibility from thier own inane blathering; you don't need to go and pour petrol on the fire. They will only quote the Reg as another source and co-conspirator.
Denying the moon landing makes me sick, it's like denying GRAVITY F.F.S.
"the 1202 alarm was the computer advising the crew that it had lowered priority of some background tasks, or shut them down, to allow for the speed in which the data from radar was coming in... this ws because the operator had forgot to shut down some stuff manualy..."
Actually, it was the rendezvous radar that was left on, and on purpose by Buzz Aldrin, in case they needed to abort the landing and find the command module again. The computer couldn't handle the rendezvous radar and the landing radar both feeding it information, a bug you might say...
You can get haynes manual for specific cars, not just random sets of cars.
perhaps the books that you;re thinking of are the data books designed for garages so that they only need buy one book for a series of cars?
and Chiltons is Haynes, still written and published by the same haynes company.
Just FYI, it was Dolmansaxlil - contains parts of the names of all the then current shoe shop chains. Written in anger after Douglas Adams tried to buy some shoes on Oxford Street.
O
Mine's the one with the The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Original Radio Scripts in the pocket
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
