File:Titan II-IIIC Flight Computer USGS.jpg

English: Titan II / IIIC Flight Computer — Universal Space Guidance System (USGS)

It's a strange kind of love.

Techno-archeologist Ken Shirriff has started the inspection of some of my historic space artifacts. He is the fellow that helped the team that rebooted the Apollo Guidance Computer and got an old IBM punch-card mainframe to do some bitcoin mining. When peering into the black box of space history, what better place than the literal black box of a Titan II nuclear ICBM guidance computer? And I have some HDR photos to share of the big boy in the silo.

In the FV Space Collection, I have the 1978 Titan II flight computer, IMU and early 1959-era Titan I TARS (Three Axis Reference System) as well as complete computer + IMU stacks for the Lunar Module and Space Shuttle. Here we dive into the 80-pound Titan guidance computer built by General Motors' Delco Division. Pop the lid, and we find a 24-bit processor spread across multiple boards full of TTL mystery chips and a beautiful unfolding accordion of magnetic core memory arrays (more of Ken's photos below).

The Titan II was the largest nuclear missile ever made by the U.S. It seems a bit cheeky to use seven digits for the serial number. I have lucky #0000069