Minuteman D-17b: The Desktop Computer Was Born in an ICBM

Video Description

In the early 1960s when computers were typically the size of a car, the USAF took on the seemingly impossible task of cramming one into a missile. That missile was the Minuteman was an entirely new concept: a small solid fuelled rocket able to independently steer itself to the target. The resulting D-17b computer was so small for the time, I argue it may have been the first desktop computer. The debt imposed on us all by nuclear weapons will never be paid off in full. But Minuteman became Minotaur, Polaris gave us GPS and Titan became Gemini. The guidance computers for all of these systems went on to evolve into the modern PC. 3D animation by Artem Tatarchenko: https://www.instagram.com/artem.iskustvo/ Sources: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/axthi6ozx5569o2q98o0n/D-17b-sources.ods?rlkey=4ex2b4qototandolccvxfn88n&dl=0 Simulator here (warning, it's not very good): https://github.com/lambdaBoost/d-17b_simulator Playlist for all public domain footage used in this video: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI2UlFg4eJTGJMqO6fouD7RmVKy3Tkl30&si=3C9_nx2JrCbT-Ih_ Summary of why I no longer use Unity. For some reason a few people took offence to that when I mentioned it previously. I had no idea people were 'territorial' about gaming engines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDPPig9JR5Y 00:00 Intro 01:35 Background 05:40 PART 1: The First ICBMs 09:49 The Need for a Guidance Computer 18:07 Launch Sequence 24:32 D-17b Physical Configuration 36:00 D-17s given to Universities 41:45 PART 2: The D-17b Architecture 58:07 Simulated Programming Examples 1:06:10 Conclusions