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From: jon@cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,sci.space
Subject: Re: Software data on Apollo space program
Summary: References on Apollo software given
Message-ID: <12607@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 20 Jul 90 17:57:30 GMT
References: <1990Jul17.123502.1639@IDA.ORG>
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 56

In article <1990Jul17.123502.1639@IDA.ORG>, bryk@IDA.ORG (Bill Brykczynski) writes:
> Could anyone provide me with references to documents describing
> the Apollo space program from a software point of view?  Specifically,
> I am interested in the software testing approach used.  I have
> heard that the operational software was "brute force" tested,
> labor intensive, and expensive.  LOC, lifecycle cost breakdown,
> error rates, etc. would be useful.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> bill brykczynski
> bryk@ida.org

I am aware of three references.  None of these provides the detail Bill asks, 
but they may provide leads.  In particular, Ceruzzi's book has a lot of 
references and a good bibliography.  (it isn't at hand at the moment so I can't
check now)

J.D. Aron, "Apollo programming support", pps. 181-186 in SOFTWARE ENGINEERING:
CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES ed. J.M. Buxton, Peter Naur, and Brian Randell, 
Petrocelli/Charter 1976, New York.

This is actually a transcript of a brief talk and discussion at the 1969 NATO
Science Committee Meeting on Software Engineering in Rome.  Aron appears to 
be talking about the ground support system, not the flight system.  He mentions
that the project ranged from 300 to 600 people at the Houston site, at the
peak about half were programmers and half were administrators and support.

There is a lot of interesting history and anecdote in this book.  It also
contains material from the first NATO conference at Garmisch in 1968, generally
regarded as the first ever meeting on software engineering, I think they
originated the term for that occassion.    There are other versions of the
proceedings of those conferences than the Buxton et al book.


Joseph M. Fox, SOFTWARE AND ITS DEVELOPMENT, Prentice-Hall, 1982.  Fox was
a top manager at IBM Federal Systems Group involved in the 
Apollo/Skylab effort.  He says it occupied 700 people for 7 years at Houston
(p. xiii); the contract was valued at $209 million, generated 23 million
instructions, and consumed 6,000+ man years (Table 4-10, p. 67).

Also I find a graph in Norman R. Augustine's AUGUSTINE'S LAWS, Viking 1986
(Fig. 23, p. 117) which Augustine credits to Barry Boehm (it's probably in
Boehm's SOFTWARE ENGINEERING ECONOMICS).  It seems to show Apollo 7 carrying
about 50,000 bytes and Apollo 11 carrying about 80,000 (this sounds too high
for the onboard computers of that time to me) and about 5 million lines
of ground support software for Apollo.  Quite a different figure from Fox.

The latest reference is Paul Ceruzzi's BEYOND THE LIMITS: FLIGHT ENTERS THE
COMPUTER AGE, MIT Press, 1989.  Highly recommended. As noted above, the 
references therein may help you.

I've cross-posted this reply to sci.space.   I, too, would be interested to
learn more about this.

- Jon Jacky, University of Washington, Seattle jon@gaffer.rad.washington.edu