A slide rule was the accepted calculator. How many of you (under 40) have ever held one? I bought a beautiful 10" K&E log log duplex decitrig, in perfect condition, for $5 at a garage sale 2 weeks ago.
Oh, and the Apollo computers DID crash - kinda sorta. It seems the rendezvous radar was switched on, and the volume of incoming data was too much for it during the last minutes of descent, far exceeding its computational capacity, causing guidance calculations to never be perfromed.
To quote:
Quote:
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a full minute's worth of guidance commands were never issued by the computer due to the rendezvous radar!
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How would YOU feel if your nav computer was silent (or throwing "1201" and "1202" errors the whole way?) for an entire minute, just before you were going to be the first ones to land (or crash!) on the moon?
If Neil Armstrong wasn't the pilot he was, literally flying by experience, they really would have crashed.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: That night watching them land (and later walk) on the moon changed my life.
Don