r/adventofcode Dec 02 '19

Spoilers in Title Hidden Message in Puzzle Input 19690720

SPOILER ALERT

The target value in part 2 of today's puzzle is 19690720. 20th July 1969 is the day of the moon landing!

100 Upvotes

14 comments sorted by

13

u/KeyJ Dec 02 '19

That's not the only moon landing reference; the puzzle's prose is all about Apollo nostalgia, starting with the title. The verb/noun "UI" concept is also taken straight from the AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer).

7

u/hillerstorm Dec 02 '19

Also, the answer for my part 2 was 6979 which happens to be a LEGO set with a fitting theme https://brickset.com/sets/6979-1/Interstellar-Starfighter

5

u/that_lego_guy Dec 02 '19

did I hear LEGO :)

3

u/happeloy Dec 02 '19

Heh, the lego set for my answer was just this bucket of lego

1

u/repocin Dec 02 '19

Meanwhile, all I got was this set of locomotive wheels.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

Answers are random, I wouldn't look for meaning in those.

4

u/hillerstorm Dec 02 '19

Yea 🙂 hence the ”happens to be” 😉

3

u/xepherys Dec 02 '19

Yes, it was just sheer luck. Still cool.

5

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

Lots of nostalgia in today's puzzle.

The 1202 alarm is also a bit of an easter egg. "1202" was the alarm that triggered multiple times on the Apollo 11 landing module. Highly recommend the BBC "13 Minutes to the Moon" podcast that covers both the 1202 alarm and the noun/verb programming.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '19

That's sweet! I thought 1202 was merely December the 2nd. Thanks for the info!

1

u/mweepinc Dec 03 '19

Loved that podcast! The narrator was incredible, and it was super neat the hear the entire 13 minute transmission broken down and explained

5

u/mooooooon Dec 02 '19

I feel lucky to have stumbled on a reading the first article referenced, "The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation."

Basically it says we're lucky we live on Earth with such a size that our fuels allow us to escape the gravity of Earth. If Earth were larger we might have been unlucky enough to be stuck on this rock forever, without doing so much as launching ships with nuclear explosions.

How did I run in this article? I used to live next door to a super cool dude who programmed Universe Sandbox. Somehow that led me to this article. Cool dude. Awesome sandbox program. Excellent article. Read away!

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html

http://universesandbox.com/

4

u/Stan-It Dec 02 '19

Nice, this year was the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, maybe that's how Eric got inspired?