![]() Miniaturisation ultimately led to personal computers and smartphones. The first Nasa prototypes even used a spare Apollo guidance computer. Instead of employing mechanical links that included cranks, pulleys and hydraulics, today flight controls are electronic and coordinated by computer systems. ![]() That concept led to Nasa's subsequent development in the early 1970s of fly-by-wire technology now fitted to almost every modern aircraft. "That was a very important moment of showing people that computers could be reliable and could be built into things." "The Apollo Guidance Computer was the first computer that people staked their lives on – a digital computer in the loop of the thing that they were flying," says Mindell. With the equivalent of only around 74KB ROM and 4KB RAM memory (an iPhone 14 has more than a million times as much memory), it enabled astronauts to navigate the roughly 380,000km (236,000 miles) from the Earth to the Moon and then descend to a precise spot on the lunar surface. "Apollo was the moment that people stopped talking about how big their computers were and started bragging about how small they were," says David Mindell, professor of the history of engineering and manufacturing at MIT and author of a book on the Apollo Guidance Computer.Īround the size of a small suitcase, with a separate display and input panel fitted to the main spacecraft console, the guidance computer was a marvel of miniaturisation. A raft of inventors and entrepreneurs also owe their success to something much more tangible from the space programme of the 1960s: advances in computing. It's not rocket science, after all.īut inspiration alone is probably not enough to justify the estimated $25.8bn (£20.6bn) – equivalent to around $257bn ($205bn) today – spent sending men to the Moon. If we can put a man on the Moon, we can surely cure malaria, fix the potholes in the road or nail that presentation. People who have helped develop new cancer treatments, designed the smartphone and built Hubble.įor anyone with any degree of aspiration, the Moon landing is hard to beat. But, perhaps more significantly, Massimino is among a generation of children who – thanks to watching astronauts walk on the Moon – were inspired to become scientists, engineers or astronomers. ![]() Apollo certainly revolutionised and accelerated space technology along with our ability to live and work in space. ![]() It's impossible to say if Hubble – and its vast scientific achievements – would have existed without the Apollo Moon landing programme. Not bad for someone with a fear of heights. Over two missions, he spent more than 30 hours spacewalking to repair the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope ( you can listen to a radio programme I made about Hubble here) with the Earth spinning some 535km (332 miles) beneath him. "I idolised those astronauts and wanted to grow up to be like Neil Armstrong," he says, "which really wasn't in the cards because I don't like heights."Īfter graduating with a PhD in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Massimino was selected as a Nasa astronaut in 1996. "I remember thinking very clearly that this was the most important thing that has happened in hundreds of years." "That's what inspired me to go into space," Massimino says. Astronaut Mike Massimino was six years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the Moon in 1969.
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