What if there were no micro-electronics?

[DangerousThing]

Some things yes. Not all though. For instance, the calculations for the stealth design of the F-117 were impossible using the method you described.

I think that at a certain point, late 50's onward, a huge amount of technology development (manufacturing, chemistry, space, et al,) was inextricably linked with the development and advancements in micro electronics.

I think that a different path could still produce the same or similar items.

In the real world everything is linked with micro electronics because we have it. However, supercomputers could have been made without ICs and do much the same job.

IMTU something happened in a time analogous to the start of the virus that caused micro electronics to stop working. A small pocket empire developed with the goal of reclaiming the stars. Their technology diverged once they realized that micro electronics couldn't be made so they made do with what they had.

I imagine that much of this will look like the traditional Traveller technology. Large computers, no cybernetics, and a bit retro.

I'm not using the jump drive because I think it would need too much calculation, but rather a different drive (the hyper sail) drive, which is slower and requires a pilot.

One of my goals is to make human crew members necessary and useful. I feel that the computer rules in T5 make humans largely irrelevant during space travel.

 

[HG_B]

MicroSpace has a Man-on-the-Moon concept that seems achievable with Mercury-Redstone technology. Did they use Integrated Circuits or just transistors?

The Mercury missions (later ones) where they did any navigation had IC's.

 

[HG_B]

In the real world everything is linked with micro electronics because we have it. However, supercomputers could have been made without ICs and do much the same job.

No. See data on why the delay in developing radar stealth tech for aircraft.

 

[Enoki]

No. See data on why the delay in developing radar stealth tech for aircraft.

It should be possible to develop stealth by brute force once the equations for fractals are known. That was the real breakthrough for that technology as it allows modelling a very complex shape. Computers would make the process faster but you could do it simply by lots of repetition and copying already solved shapes and surfaces onto new designs to save time.

 

[DangerousThing]

One thing is sure, there would be no CotI, as computers would not be small and cheap enough for most of us to have one .

And no cellular phones, nor, I guess digital photo cameras, so more privacy :devil:. Videos and music would stay at the casette level...

Analog video disks should be possible, and so should digital ones. The receivers and recorders would be rather large.

I think cameras would stay with film because I can't imagine a video sensor without microelectronics.

And CotI could have existed via netnews back in the old usenet days. It wasn't as pretty, but I still wasted, er,... spent many hours there.

 

[HG_B]

It should be possible to develop stealth by brute force once the equations for fractals are known. That was the real breakthrough for that technology as it allows modelling a very complex shape. Computers would make the process faster but you could do it simply by lots of repetition and copying already solved shapes and surfaces onto new designs to save time.

Nope. That was tried in the USSR & by the Skunk works. It was impossible until digital super-computers came along.

 

[Ishmael]

You might want to look into various forms of analog computers and even fluidics.

other options...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconventional_computing

 

[BytePro]

Elaborate; list those components and the workarounds needed.

:rofl:

Feel free to actually support your claim by listing components that were CP to the success of the Apollo program that were not achievable without ICs.

 

[atpollard]

The Mercury missions (later ones) where they did any navigation had IC's.

Apparently not in the Communications systems:

Much of the communication technology used in the Mercury Project came out of research done during World War II (WWII). The various styles of modulation, encoding and decoding the signal, error control, ranging and other protocol were improved upon following the War (Fortescue, 2003). Even more impressive is the fact that this was done prior to digital electronics. Project Mercury occurred during the pre-microprocessor age so all of the systems were analog; the gauges were all mechanical, there were no integrated circuits (IC’s), PC boards, memory, instruction sets, etc. Actually, it was not until the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) that the first microprocessor was used in NASA manned space flight projects (Apollo Guidance Computer).

And the Automatic Stabilization Control System was analog:

Computers were not small and efficiently functional during the 1950’s. Thus, any analysis done for the sake of control purposes had to be done in analog format. The ACU consisted of four components that received the gyro input, used a series of step-based analog analyses involving many transistors, resistors, and circuits, channeled the relevant information to the display panels, and activated the RCS if changes were needed. (McDonnell, Project Mercury Familiarization Manual)

So I stand by the opinion that an analog spacecraft receiving guidance from a vacuum tube computer on Earth might be capable of a lunar landing ... at least until I can find some critical IC component.

 

[BytePro]

Nope. That was tried in the USSR & by the Skunk works. It was impossible until digital super-computers came along.

Impossible? Feel free to prove that blatant assertion.

Just because something historically wasn't accomplished doesn't alone make it 'impossible' to achieve.

Further, super-computers didn't just 'come along' - their development was largely pursued to address certain problem domains. Notably ones created by the application of prior technologies. Sure, today most super-computers are general purpose in nature because they are applicable to so many problem domains - and ICs make it more practical for them to be general purpose. (Though, even today, special purpose super-computers exist - such as the Anton (sp?) used for molecular dynamic simulations.)

IC technology has certainly made a good many things much more practical than prior technologies. Its hard to imagine replicating Altera's FPGAs from a few years ago, with their nearly 4 billion transistors (IIRC the public record of the time) with discrete component technology also dependent on transistors. Highly impractical sounding, at best, to be sure. Maybe with organic or 'grown' technology one could see production matching the numbers, but even interconnecting vertically, the volume alone would stretch credulity...

However, as to achieving the same results using totally different technology - nothing but pure speculation within the limits of current theories. Discrete components in the sense discussed here are fundamentally limited by spatial separation - everything else is up to design. In practice an IC is a discrete component, after all. If I feed two optical inputs into a discrete photonic array which, at the speed of light in the medium, results in outputs that are the solution to a complex set of simultaneous integral and differential equations the net effect may easily be much faster than if the same inputs were processed by a massively parallel IC based super-computer.

 

[BytePro]

...
So I stand by the opinion that an analog spacecraft receiving guidance from a vacuum tube computer on Earth might be capable of a lunar landing ... at least until I can find some critical IC component.

Yep - more than one way to skin a cat.

The IC's of the Apollo program - that probably numbered less than half a dozen for boosters, command and lunar modules - surely had gates numbering only in the thousands. Special purpose non-IC designs would more likely have required less components, but more design effort. Sure, probably requiring added volume, mass and power requirements, but unlikely to be a show stopper. ICs were used because they were available and offered a solution - if they had not been, other solutions, or adjusted goals would have been pursued.

The Apollo program is a prime example of what can be done when the motivation and resources are available.

 

[BlackBat242]

To address various points brought up by various posters:

1. All a 1970s/early 1980s IC is is a single small package that contains a single (or a set of single) circuit(s). The same circuits were operational long before the first IC was made (see #2).

2. Discrete semi-conductors (transistors & diodes) were in existence from the early 1950s at the latest. They function via semi-conductor junctions, just like in ICs.

3. The equations for the faceted stealth design used in the 1970s Have Blue aircraft and the 1980s F-117 were developed by a Soviet scientist in the 1950s & early 1960s... without the use of more than a minimal computer (if that)! Lockheed found them in an international physics magazine and used them virtually unchanged.

4. Smart weapons existed before ICs... the sensor in the nose of the Sidewinder AAM is the same principle as the laser quadrant detector in the laser tracker in the FLIR turret of the A-6E Intruder which guided LGBs very nicely in Desert Storm... and that design dated from the late 1940s (4 single analog detectors producing varying outputs)!

5. Non-film cameras were in use in the 1950s... recording to magnetic tape via non-IC electronic circuits. Those cameras also produced closed-circuit TV well before ICs began to be used. They used a mechanically or electrically scanned single sensor.
Even a modern "staring array" non-scanned video camera would be possible without ICs... after all, there are no ICs in the sensing array, just in the signal processing section. The signals from the camera head would simply take longer to process, and require a larger & heavier converter section, that's all.

 

[Ishmael]

non=electronic computers

http://pruned.blogspot.com/2012/01/gardens-as-crypto-water-computers.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17730-new-microprocessor-runs-on-thin-air.html

 

[DangerousThing]

To address various points brought up by various posters:

1. All a 1970s/early 1980s IC is is a single small package that contains a single (or a set of single) circuit(s). The same circuits were operational long before the first IC was made (see #2).

My point is that I'm wondering what is and isn't possible if electronics don't work beyond a certain density, which I called microelectronics. I do agree that the first attempts at ICs were basically discrete components without their shells put into a single shell. Those are probably fine.

For digital memory I'd probably go with core memory.

 

[HG_B]

Apparently not in the Communications systems:

So I stand by the opinion that an analog spacecraft receiving guidance from a vacuum tube computer on Earth might be capable of a lunar landing ... at least until I can find some critical IC component.

That's nice but, hardly relevant. Study how the landings were actually done and the time lag for Earth to Moon comm. That's about all I can say as I don't feel like typing pages & pages.

 

[atpollard]

That's nice but, hardly relevant. Study how the landings were actually done and the time lag for Earth to Moon comm. That's about all I can say as I don't feel like typing pages & pages.

"The Apollo mission was conceived at the height of the Cold War. Planners were concerned that the Soviet Union might try to jam any communication information sent from the ground, so the on-board computers had to be capable of having autonomous command of the spacecraft." -ABC (on the Lunar Lander)

Clearly a 'Soviet Union' jamming cis-lunar communications is hardly a universal problem to be overcome.

Again, IC are useful, but not essential.

 

[DangerousThing]

That's nice but, hardly relevant. Study how the landings were actually done and the time lag for Earth to Moon comm. That's about all I can say as I don't feel like typing pages & pages.

And yet the on-board computers of the Apollo systems were extremely primitive. I believe they used core memory. This was done, I believe for radiation hardening. In other words, these computers had already been vetted and it was easier to use a primitive but workable computer than one which might fail.

And the landing had to be handled on board because the lag time from Earth was too long to handle a manned mission by remote control. However, as much as could be computed beforehand was.

And the human pilot still did a lot of the work.

This is what I want for my game. I want a group of small computers to help run the ship. The bridge computer will probably have a lot of electronics and a genetically engineered and cloned human brain inside. So this system, at least, will have "intel" inside. :rofl:

I thank all the contributors and am still looking for side effects that require microelectronics to work.

Many things will just be changed. For instance, cell phones will probably be the size of a briefcase.

 

[BytePro]

Yep, study the Apollo missions and you will find there were:
A) Contingencies to complete the mission without functioning computers.
B) Times when they had to be used (Apollo 11 stands out )

Computers were very useful - and using ICs rather than discrete components had numerous advantages - but, despite flippant posts to the contrary, using ICs was not at all an absolute necessity for the Apollo program.

As to other side effects of not having ICs tech - you really are only notably talking about size. Ignoring remote processing (not sure one should), sure, general purpose desktops, laptops, tablets, wrist computers and the like are impractical. Not really seeing 'cloned brains' as a necessity, though - again, the tech presented in Classic Traveller LBB1-3 is basically non-IC. In fact, non-IC general purpose computers were commercially available right up to the 1970's (first commercial CPU was around '71, after all, IIRC). Of course, that is a setting decision given the fictional nature of interstellar starships.

P.S. - You might be interested in Konrad Zuse and his machines (re: Zuse KG - bought by Siemens by the end of the '60s) and early dedicated computers, like the U.S. WWII era Torpedo Data Computer.

 

[BillDowns]

A lot of interesting information here.

Re: TDC - don't forget its predecessor - the skimmers' Rangekeepers which were in use before the TDC.

Re: Mag core memory on Apollo - don't forget the computers on the spacecraft were designed several years prior to use, so that would c 1965. Semiconductor memory at that time was relatively bulky compared to the mature mag core memory. And mag core also has the advantage that mag core keeps its values during power loss and does not have to be reloaded.

Re: vacuum tubes - I can see that if semiconductors are not available, for whatever reason, research into micro-sizing vacuum tubes would have been conducted or more into analog methods.

 

[epicenter00]

This might be a bit of an aside, so I apologize. Yet, I feel I should ask even if it makes me sound like a total noob:

Why do you need a computer to land the moon mission (I'm not talking about the Apollo but a hypothetical moon mission)?

What prevents a human from doing it by eye and slide rule or whatever? I know that sounds ridiculous, but ... why not? The relative motion vectors of the moon and Earth are predictable for the point of view of plotting a course. Humans can land airplanes and do a lot of other time-sensitive precision work. Now someone is going to say it's "much more difficult to land an airplane than a moon lander" ... but how much more difficult once you've matched the major motion vectors relative to the lander and moon? Matching vectors is vastly quicker with a computer hooked up to instruments, but a human could do it as well. It'd take longer, and this hypothetical mission would need to take that into account.

It seems to me that reason why they used computers is that they wanted precision because certain variables were very limited - essentially consumables such as fuel and crew supplies (such as food/water/oxygen). The biggest limit on these things was because they had to launch the mission from Earth directly in a single shot so it had to fit on a single rocket shot. So they needed maximum speed and precision to get the mission there and back again within the tolerances of their supplies (and I guess to get there "before the Soviets", who were definitely doing stuff, though the US didn't know exactly how much progress the Soviets had made, so they had to do it ASAP).

It seems to me (when I wrote my earlier post) if they were willing to go through the expense and time to set up an orbital space station as a jumping-off point, they could (over time) shuttle up enough fuel and consumables to send a much more robust mission to the moon, one that could be more imprecisely plotted using more primitive methods. It might take a week to approach the moon and put the lunar orbiter in a satisfactory orbit to deploy the lander, another week to reverse the process, leaving only a day or two wander around on the moon, but I think you could do it without ICs ... maybe even without computers as we know of them.

The national resources of the US might not have allowed it at the time, so it'd probably take years more to set up your moon trip, but if most other factors except computers were equal, I'd think it'd still be possible if they wanted to do it that much.