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发帖数: 31659 | 1 https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/when-computers-were-human
What’s often not known is that all the early rocket experiments and later
missions to the moon and beyond wouldn’t have been possible without a team
at JPL known as the human “computers.” Most of these human computers were
women who either had degrees in mathematics or were simply very good at
mathematics. Over the course of time, these women not only performed
hundreds of thousands of mathematical calculations crucial to the U.S. space
program, but also eventually became some of the first computer programmers
at NASA.
....
A talented team of women, who were around since JPL's beginnings in 1936 and
who were known as computers, were responsible for the number-crunching of
launch windows, trajectories, fuel consumption and other details that helped
make the U.S. space program a success.
....
具体计算任务之一例为：
When a spacecraft is launched, it begins sending telemetry signals back to
Earth. These signals tell engineers information about the spacecraft’s
location and health. But this information isn’t perfectly straightforward.
It arrives as a bunch of numbers that need to be combined in formulas along
with other constantly changing parameters (such as velocity, vehicle mass
and the effect of gravity from nearby bodies) in order to reveal the
spacecraft’s actual location. Before there were computers (as we know them
today) to do these calculations, human computers would feverishly calculate
the exact location of the spacecraft as the telemetry came in and compare
that to the planned trajectories. Their calculations would reveal whether
the spacecraft was on target.
假设对四则运算而言，珠算比笔算快。那么上面这类任务我认为珠算必然赢笔算。这就
是普及性的低端算力用途之一例。 |
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