This book documents the development of missile and spacecraft guidance computers from the earliest efforts to the current Space Station and satellite onboard systems. This book developed from the author's presentation at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in 2009 for the Workshop on Flight Software. The second and third editions were expanded with new material and references. The fourth edition updated the material to the state of the art in 2014, with discussions of...

Apollo was built in the era of “big iron” computer mainframes. The concept of an onboard computer for space missions was radically new. There was only one place in the world that could design the Apollo Guidance Computers, and that was MIT. It took most of the U.S.’s production of integrated circuits, another radical idea replacing individual vacuum tubes, to build the AGC’s. It took 2,000 person-years of independent code review and validation to ensure that they would operate properly.

This book is about the Personal Robots from the 1980's that inspired hopes for the future. This was triggered, in part, by the robots of the Star War series. R2D2 was based on the three service droids of the early Science Fiction movie, Silent Running. They were named Huey, Louie, and Dewey. At the same time, personal computers were emerging as affordable and easier to use. The excitement and the technology reached a tipping point. Before this time, robotics mainly meant large hydraulic un...

This book is intended as an introduction to the topics of computer virtualization and the cloud. We will see how the topics come together.The book includes extensive reference and background material. It will not teach you to be an expert in virtualization or cloud technologies. It will teach you to understand and appreciate these topics, and how they fit into the big picture of computing. The best way to learn these technologies is to use them.

In the last 11 years, a lot has changed in this field. That's to be expected in a technology that is driven by Moore's Law, where complexity doubles every 18 months or so. So we have a factor of 7 or so, but actually the rate of change is increasing.Where we are today is machines built with multiple cores on one chip, each core being a complete computer. The same communication schemes discussed in this book are used, with the same trade-off's, shared memory or communication channel....

This is a book on energy storage. Most electrical energy is AC, and is used when generated. Direct current is stored in battery, but there is no such things as an AC battery. There are other ways to store the energy. Solar cells only produce electricity during the day, and we might need the energy at night. Hydro power system generate power when there is a sufficient amount of water flow. Nuclear plants generate power as needed. Power from geothermal wells is generally available 24x7.

Pronounced RISK-Five, RISC-V is the latest implementation of the MIPS architecture, in an open source configuration. The project kicked off in 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley.It had been announced in 2018. Multiple companies now offer RISC-V chips, and the architecture is compatible with several FPGA's. The RISC-V architecture is making inroads on the popular ARM embedded architecture.There have been numerous space missions using the MIPS architecture. One of...

I am assuming a basic knowledge of computer architecture, but most of what you need to know is also included. The details of computer math are presented in an appendix. I have collected together a representative list of reference books and interesting titles in the bibliography. In a quickly evolving field such as embedded computers, new and relevant material is emerging all the time. This book represents a current snapshot of the field. The plan is to update the material at reasonable int...

This book traces the history and technology of several Irons works in pre-colonial Maryland, starting with the Colony of Maryland. The collected information is the result of a long chain of research by tireless researchers in dingy colonial era archives, and in dismal swamps.It tell the story of Richard Snowden, coming to the Colony of Maryland as an endentured servant, and eventually building a mansion for himself and all of his daughters.

This book covers the topic of Telescopes in Space. Observation of the night sky's started way before Civilization. Early humans looked at all the lights in the sky, saw that some moved, and some were fixed. What did it all mean?The initial assumption was that the Earth was the center of the Universe, and everything traveled around it. But, by observations, some “heavenly bodies” wander about in the sky, and increasingly complex theories were developed to address this. Later, when t...

This book covers the topic of satellite control centers for Cubesats. We'll take a look at some of the historical development of satellite control centers. Mention a spacecraft control center, and every one remembers the one from the movie Apollo-13. A cubesat control center can be implemented on a laptop. We'll look at the evolution of satellite control centers to understand how we got to where we are, and we'll look at evolving technology to see where we can go.As technology adva...

This book is about trains and railroads, canals and roads, and the industries that relied on them. It spans more than a 265 year period, from 1854 through the current day. The discussion is centered geographically on the City of Cumberland, Maryland, in Allegany County, near the western end of the State. Cumberland is called the Queen City of the Alleghenies. This discussion does not focus on the equipment or operations of any one particular railroad. Many different forms of locomotion are...