Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Albion Wilde

Computers existed!

https://astronomy.com/news/2019/05/apollo-computers-when-ibm-engineers-gave-rockets-a-brain


27 posted on 04/21/2023 5:22:21 PM PDT by Reily (!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies ]


To: Reily
Computers existed!
https://astronomy.com/news/2019/05/apollo-computers-when-ibm-engineers-gave-rockets-a-brain

Your article is great, but it is about the Apollo missions starting in the late 1960s, which was several years after the mission depicted in Hidden Figures—the U.S.'s first manned orbital flight in 1962 with John Glenn. It llasted only 5 hours, but had required years of NASA development starting in the 1950s. The leading woman depicted in the film, Katherine Johnson, had gone to work for NASA in 1953. (She died two years ago at age 101.)

Part of the film version of the story depicted another of the black women mathematicians urging the use of a large computer for the Manned Space Center; but certainly no one had desktops yet in that era.

Don't know how old you are, but I remember when a publishing company I did business with in the 1970's installed a mainframe computer. The hardware was the size of a U-Haul delivery van, and they had to build a temperature-controlled room and extensive air-conditioning to house it—just to do word processing for typography, not terabytes of math. Today we have more computing power in our phones.

The entire trajectory of tech development is "more reach, smaller size, cheaper per unit of measurement."

There's a great moment in the 1995 film Apollo 13 about NASA's first lunar mission in 1970. The Houston control center was depicted with two or three rows of dozens of desktop computer stations where engineers in short-sleeved white dress shirts and neckties were tensely monitoring the voice communications with the astronauts as they approached the moon. Some glitch came up, and after a moment of extreme panic, they all suddenly whipped out their slide rules! (It's been almost 30 years since I saw the movie, so I hope my recollection is correct, but that should give you an idea how powerful a moment it was—and I'm a writer, not a STEM person.)

35 posted on 04/22/2023 9:09:27 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (“There is no good government at all & none possible.”--Mark Twain)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson