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Comment by kens | Hacker News Reader

Author here for your Apollo questions :-)

Great article. I'd never thought about a spacecraft ADI having a third axis. Sadly, a nitpick - Bill Lear's F-5 autopilot was not, as far as I can tell, in any way connected to the Northrop F-5 fighter jet.

Thanks. You are correct about the F-5 autopilot, so I fixed that. It turns out that it was used in planes such as the C-47, C-60, C-45, and B-26, but is unrelated to the F-5.

>The Command Module for Apollo used a completely different FDAI (flight director-attitude indicator) that was built by Honeywell.

That's surprising. Was there any requirement that necessitated them to be different parts, or it's just because different suppliers were chosen by Grumman/North American?

It's probably a combination of different suppliers being chosen, and everyone wanted a piece of the pie. But it's annoying when I figure out how something works in the Lunar Module and then discover that the Command Module is completely different. Not to mention that the Saturn V is a whole different world.

I mainly remember this because he refers to it as the 'frappin 8 ball' in the Apollo 13 movie, if my memory serves.

same here, he sure does

Yes, in the movie, Lovell says "What's the frappin' attitude?" as the 8-ball rolls out of control. The actual Apollo 13 transcript has nothing like that, interestingly enough.

Links: https://archive.org/details/apollo1319959231994/page/n92/mod... https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/alsj/...

I remember a similar thing from the, IIRC, F-104.

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