It’s still impressive 50 years later and modern comparisons aren’t fair
Fifty years ago Saturday, Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the surface of another world.
That’s hardly news. It’s also hardly news that during the past week there have been scores of retrospectives trying to place the events before, and for a few years after, July 20, 1969, in perspective. That’s an almost impossible task. For while it was a planet-wide event—one of the few in history which were actually more than planet-wide—it will always be one shared by billions of people.
It was one of those “where were you when?” moments, like 9-11, like the Kennedy Assassination, like Pearl Harbor.
Yet, those three reactions reach a shared conclusion very unlike Apollo 11, in fact, quite unlike most moments in our history. For those events immediately conjure up feelings of sadness, shock, anger and a range of emotions.
The moon landing? One overriding motion. Wow, what an achievement!
It still does. Some of the retrospectives have mentioned the smart phone you’ve got in your hand has literally millions of times more computing power than NASA computers in 1969.
Which is true. And totally misses the point.
The Apollo 11 computers—and there were four of them, not one—were remarkably sophisticated for their time and were not designed for anything other than the task they performed so ably.
It would be unfair to compare the Wright Brothers first plane to a Boeing 777. But both did—and do—exactly what they were designed for, prove heavier-than-air flight was possible and carry passengers safely over great distances.
Part of the amazing achievement in 1969 was in how it was accomplished using less than the computing power you’d find in the kids toy aisle today. For starters, the NASA computers were designed for one thing and one only, to get three human beings to the moon, land two safely, and return. That meant they did not need to waste resources on such non-necessities as browsers (no Internet), touch screens or even user interfaces. Their focus, and resources, was on preventing system crashes and recovering from overloads.
If a crash happens on your phone today, you reboot and see that chicken casserole recipe in a couple of minutes. If it happened in July, 1969, three dead astronauts.
Actually, the “toy” computer in the lunar lander prevented a figurative and literal crash which almost resulted in two dead astronauts. An overload occurred as it was touching down for that historic landing but the system allowed Armstrong to steer the craft in safely. It was designed that way.
Fifty years later, the moon landing is still something special, something we take pride in.
Pride not only in the entire effort but in the amazing technical expertise which produced a visit to another world with 2K of memory and 36K of storage.—M.B.
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