Land Apollo 11 on the code that flew it.
Weavers' Moon will run the real 1969 guidance software in your browser. You key in the commands. It flies the descent, until you decide to take over.
First beta: available shortly.
Opens your email app. Or write to
hello@weaversmoon.com.
Behind this text: Luminary 099, The Lunar Landing, page 785, as assembled on 14 July 1969. Real code, public domain.
PRO (proceed) runs the next line of the program.
The real computer flies
Weavers' Moon is built on Luminary 099, the program that landed Eagle on 20 July 1969, unchanged. It ran on the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), which the crew worked through a keypad and display called the DSKY. In the beta, an emulator called yaAGC, a program that behaves exactly like the original computer, will run it in your browser. A simulated lunar module will give it something to fly: accelerometers, gimbal angles, landing radar, a throttle and sixteen thrusters.
- VERB 37 ENTER 63 ENTER
- Select the braking program, as the crew did. The computer plans the burn from the data you key in.
- PRO
- Proceed, and the computer lights the engine and flies the braking phase on its own.
- 1202
- Program alarms will happen for real. You decide whether to trust the computer.
- P66
- Take over for the last 150 metres and land it yourself.
Woven by hand
Before it flew, this program was woven. At Raytheon's plant in Waltham, Massachusetts, women threaded copper wire through or around tiny magnetic cores, one wire at a time. Through a core meant 1; around it meant 0. A single misplaced wire changed the program, so every rope was inspected before it flew.
Their names were rarely recorded. Weavers' Moon is named for them: Luna Textricum, the moon of the women who weave.
Weave one word
The listing at the top of this page holds the constant
OCT 04024, an octal number: each digit runs from 0
to 7. Weave it into these cores, one group of three per digit.
Press a core to drop it onto the wire, so the wire passes through it. The cores you press in a group must add up to the digit above it. Leave the rest lifted: the wire goes around them, and they count nothing.
Digit 1: weave 0
Leave lifted
Digit 2: weave 4
Make 4
Digit 3: weave 0
Leave lifted
Digit 4: weave 2
Make 2
Digit 5: weave 4
Make 4
Target: OCT 04024 Your word:
0 of 3 digits woven. Digits 1 and 3 are 0: leave those cores lifted.
Any cockpit
One simulator will run the computer and the lunar module. Every device joins it by role: a keypad and display, a hand controller, or the view out of the window. You'll be able to use one, or all of them at once.
- This browser
- Keyboard, mouse or touch, with nothing to install.
- Your phone
- A DSKY in your hand, or tilt it to steer.
- A Raspberry Pi DSKY
- Built in LEGO or a 3D-printed case.
- A gamepad or joystick
- The hand controller.
- A second screen
- The view out of the window.
Planned missions
- Crew procedure
- Key the real procedure, from the pre-descent data to touchdown.
- Armstrong
- The computer is heading for a boulder field. Find somewhere better and fly there.
- Fide Machinae
- By trust in the machine: the 1202 alarm, as it happened.
- Quick landing
- Start low and land it by hand.
- Weaving
- Weave words of rope yourself, then fly what you wove.
For classrooms and families
Weavers' Moon is for anyone who wants to land on the Moon, and for classes learning how a computer, and the people who built it, got Apollo 11 there. The weaving puzzle above works as a lesson starter today.
- No accounts
- The beta is planned so that nobody signs up to play. Pupils won't need an email address.
- Nothing collected
- This site sets no cookies and collects nothing about you. The game will collect only what it needs to run.
- Devices
- A school laptop or tablet with a current browser. A phone, gamepad or Raspberry Pi is optional.
- Who should email
- Teachers and parents, for a class or a child. Young players: ask an adult to email for you.
Fly it first.
The first beta will be available shortly. Email us and we'll tell you when it opens.
I want early access!Tell us whether you're a teacher, a maker or a family.
