Mixed feelings... On the one hand, fascinating to see the guts of these circuits revealed, on the other that's destruction on a level that makes me cringe. I know that she got the board with the specific instructions to destroy it so I guess she lived up to the promise but taking a chisel to these bugs me in a way that is hard to put to words.
Given the corrosion of the traces they were no longer functional anyway - destructive testing on a few of them to identify the chips inside and getting microscope images of the dies is justified in this case in my opinion. Xray doesn't have the resolution in silicon that's needed to see the actual device structure. The information yielded allows the construction of an equivalent circuit, and possibly repair of the board. You only need to break open one of each type, at worst.
They were X-rayed too. X-ray imaging can only tell you so much. I think it is perfectly acceptable to destroy some to gain an understanding of what these things actually were. She did a marvelous job of documenting the teardown and should be commended for that, many more people will have an appreciation for this historical technology with this documentation.
This is why I love HN, every so often we run across a link like this where someone is toiling away with just the most fascinating work, often for just the shear love of the technology. By the way, if you go up to the home page, there are many more interesting gems from Fran.
Since it's not explicitly stated until near the end of the very long page, the LVDC was the Saturn V rocket's Launch Vehicle Digital Computer. More details at [1].
> so that once and for all the real technology beneath the surface could be understood, that could explain how the Apollo Launch Vehicle Digital Computer really worked.
I guess there is no way back on that one.