50 Years Ago–Getting Apollo 11 to the Moon on Less than the Power of a USB Stick

Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins left Earth on July 16th from Cape Kennedy in Florida.  It was days later that Armstrong and Aldrin stepped foot onto the moon.  One of the most amazing things about this journey was that, by today’s standards, the NASA computing system was as basic as a pocket calculator.  Yet, the ingenious computer systems were able to help guide the astronauts over 221,000 miles of space and return them home safely.

While the astronauts would probably have preferred to fly the spacecraft manually, only the AGC could provide the accuracy in navigation and control required to send them to the Moon and return them safely home again, independent of any Earth-based navigation system.

The importance of this computer was highlighted in a lecture by astronaut David Scott who said: “If you have a basket ball and a baseball 14 feet apart, where the baseball represents the moon and the basketball represents the Earth, and you take a piece of paper sideways, the thinness of the paper would be the corridor you have to hit when you come back.”

Knowing that a USB memory stick today is more powerful than the computers that put men on the moon is a testimony to the relentless pace of technological advances issued by human ingenuity.

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