Importance of The Apollo Guidance Computer For Apollo Moon Missions

NASA, is that you? Because Houston we do not have a problem all thanks to the Apollo Guidance Computer. NASA stands for Aeronautics and Space Administration, which allowed us to see the moon, the stars, and all the planets. Doctor Charles Stark Draper NASA was able to show us all these amazing things around us. The Apollo Guidance Computer was used during all of the Apollo Moon missions to provide routing and regulation. ‘This pioneering digital flight computer was the first real-time embedded computing system to collect data automatically and provide mission-critical calculations for the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module’ (Milestones).

NASA stands for Aeronautics and Space Administration, which allowed us to see the moon, the stars, and all the planets. NASA began the Apollo project in earlier part of the 1960s which was taking a rocket from here to the moon. The Apollo Guidance Computer dates from 1962 through 1972. When the project began it was started off a concise list of needs with no specific requirements, but that quickly changed when NASA began demanding new requirements for the program though never giving away too much information. According to NASA, the computer was rather compact for its time. The Apollo Guidance Computer was the deciding factor on the speed of the program itself, meaning that the program was only as fast as it’s developers and assembly rate.

Acknowledgments to NASA and the help of some incredibly intelligent individuals we were and are actually able to see all these things surrounding us not only in pictures but in real time. But without the service of Doctor Charles Stark Draper, who worked at MIT in the Instrumentation Lab as a Professor, NASA would not have been able to reach these beings. NASA was able to show us all these remarkable objects about us. Doctor Draper was so invested in his work he even offered to go into space to operate the system himself, though NASA declined (Tylko). For the 1960s there was not much in the science world about navigation in space and technology to last up there, but fortunately, MIT and Doctor Draper held up their end of the offer by providing an impeccable piece of computer technology.

‘The Apollo Guidance Computer weighed 70 pounds, consumed 55 watts of power and occupied only 0.97 cubic feet inside the spacecraft. These first digital flight computers were limited to only 36,000 words of fixed memory and 2,000 words of RAM and operated at a 12-microsecond clock speed’ (Tylko). The computer included software that had both a combination of language and also how to interpret numerical verbiage. Astronauts could communicate with the computer using the display and the keyboard units (NASA). The computer was located near the navigator’s station. ‘The Apollo Guidance Computer was one of the first computers to use integrate circuits’ (Milestones). The computer had memory that was both persistent and erasable memory, which allowed swift development over the original evaluations. ‘In Apollo, they also contained the data and routines needed to ready the computer for use when it was first turned on.

Fixed memory contained programs that did not need to be changed during the course of a mission. The cycle times of the computer’s memories were equal for simplicity of operation’ (NASA). The Apollo Guidance Computer was used during all of the Apollo Moon missions to provide routing and regulation. ‘This pioneering digital flight computer was the first real-time embedded computing system to collect data automatically and provide mission-critical calculations for the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module’ (Milestones). ‘During the first manned lunar landing, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (ScD ’63 Aeronautics and Astronautics) reported a series of program alarms indicating that the AGC was overloaded. An erroneous switch position caused the computer to process inputs from the lunar module’s rendezvous radar, overwhelming its computational throughput. Despite its overloaded condition, the AGC continued to function properly.

With input from flight controllers in the Mission Control Center in Houston, Neil Armstrong made the determination to proceed with the landing’ (Tylko). The Apollo Guidance Computer was able to make it through fifteen flights perfectly, all including astronauts. Nine of the flights went to the moon and six were successful moon landings (Milestones). Without this specific computer, NASA would have never made it to space or the moon, or even put people in it either, this computer allowed there to be people on the moon which was an outlandish thought to even think of. The Apollo Guidance Computer was used between the mid-1960s and late 1970s. ‘Continuous and careful attention to reliability led to the discovery of problems. Builders flight-screened components lot by lot.

Post-production hardware tests included vibration, shock, acceleration, temperature, vacuum, humidity, salt fog, and electronic noise. As D.C. Fraser, an engineer on the project, later remarked, ‘reliability of the Apollo computer was bought with money’ (NASA). This computer piloted the final Apollo spacecraft that docked with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in the mid-1970s (Tylko). After that, the Apollo program came to an end, but NASA asked the MIT Instrumentation Lab to continue in its research to the interstellar shuttle switching to technology applied to flying. The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, formally known as MIT Instrumentation Lab, still continued and continues its exploration into exploring space (Tylko).