Ken Shirriff programs Apollo Guidance Computer for Bitcoin mining
Summary
Computer scientist Ken Shirriff successfully programmed a restored Apollo Guidance Computer, originally developed to navigate NASA's Apollo spacecraft, to perform bitcoin mining hashing calculations. This vintage computer, which weighs about 70 pounds and features only 4 KB of RAM, was salvaged from a scrapyard in the 1970s and never flew in space. Shirriff's custom code enabled the 1960s machine to execute SHA-256 calculations, essential for bitcoin mining, though each calculation took about 5.15 seconds; consequently, he estimated that finding a new block at 2019’s network difficulty would take roughly a million times the age of the universe. Despite demonstrating the hashing process, the computer did not earn any bitcoin, highlighting the extreme demands of the proof-of-work required by the protocol.
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