“That's one small step for a man..."
“That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. Those were the first words from the North American astronaut Neil Armstrong. Apollo 11 was the mission who took, for the first time, men to the moon. Through all my life, I've heard that it was a hoax, that this was filmed on a movie studio and a lot more "proofs" that guarantee this version. Fortunately, the people who believe this are way more less than the ones who know that the mission was 100% real.
So to be sure, you just need to read a little bit about the people who worked for this to happen. Or maybe just watch a documentary the one I'm going to talk about. Moon Machines EP3: Navigation Computer: that's the name of a 45 documentary on how software engineering made the Apollo missions possible.
So to get in context, we need to start with the situation in which this documentary is placed. In the 1950s, the US and the Soviet Union started the well known Space Race. At first, the goal was to develop the best (Inter Continental Ballistic missile) IBC, then put a satellite on orbit and last but not least, setting a man for the first time to the moon. As you may think, it was not an easy task.
One of the main characters in this achievement was the MIT. The people from this institution were in charge of the development of a system who could take a spaceship to the Moon. They started testing with airplanes, using gyroscopes, accelerometers and a machine who translated the info obtained from those instruments into flight instructions. At first, it worked, but they needed more power in order to achieve a better and faster response.
A Digital Computer Machine was the answer. But at that time, the concept of software was not even known. Developing programs was not as intuitive as its know. Punched cards, complicated circuits where the only way of doing it. Expensive and time consuming. Fortunately, they made it. A computer with a really small memory took the man to the Moon.
“That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. Those were the first words from the North American astronaut Neil Armstrong. Apollo 11 was the mission who took, for the first time, men to the moon. Through all my life, I've heard that it was a hoax, that this was filmed on a movie studio and a lot more "proofs" that guarantee this version. Fortunately, the people who believe this are way more less than the ones who know that the mission was 100% real.
So to be sure, you just need to read a little bit about the people who worked for this to happen. Or maybe just watch a documentary the one I'm going to talk about. Moon Machines EP3: Navigation Computer: that's the name of a 45 documentary on how software engineering made the Apollo missions possible.
So to get in context, we need to start with the situation in which this documentary is placed. In the 1950s, the US and the Soviet Union started the well known Space Race. At first, the goal was to develop the best (Inter Continental Ballistic missile) IBC, then put a satellite on orbit and last but not least, setting a man for the first time to the moon. As you may think, it was not an easy task.
One of the main characters in this achievement was the MIT. The people from this institution were in charge of the development of a system who could take a spaceship to the Moon. They started testing with airplanes, using gyroscopes, accelerometers and a machine who translated the info obtained from those instruments into flight instructions. At first, it worked, but they needed more power in order to achieve a better and faster response.
A Digital Computer Machine was the answer. But at that time, the concept of software was not even known. Developing programs was not as intuitive as its know. Punched cards, complicated circuits where the only way of doing it. Expensive and time consuming. Fortunately, they made it. A computer with a really small memory took the man to the Moon.
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