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NASA Moon Programming

Computer History Museum Publishes Memories of the Programmer for NASA's Moon Missions (computerhistory.org) 45

This week Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum posted a PDF transcript (and video excerpts) from an interview with 81-year-old Margaret Hamilton, the programmer/systems designer who in the 1960s became director of the Software Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory which developed the on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program. Prior to that Hamilton had worked on software to detect an airplane's radar signature, but thought, "You know, 'I guess I should delay graduate school again because I'd like to work on this program that puts all these men on the Moon....'"

"There was always one thing that stood out in my mind, being in the onboard flight software, was that it was 'man rated,' meaning if it didn't work a person's life was at stake if not over. That was always uppermost in my mind and probably many others as well."

Interestingly, Hamilton had originally received two job offers from the Apollo Space Program, and had told them to flip a coin to settle it. ("The other job had to do with support systems. It was software, but it wasn't the onboard flight software.") But what's fascinating is the interview's glimpses at some of the earliest days of the programming profession: There was all these engineers, okay? Hardware engineers, aeronautical engineers and all this, a lot of them out of MIT... But the whole idea of software and programming...? Dick Battin, Dr. Battin, when they told him that they were going to be responsible for the software...he went home to his wife and said he was going to be in charge of software and he thought it was some soft clothing...
Hamilton also remembers in college taking a summer job as a student actuary at Travelers Insurance in the mid-1950s, and "all of a sudden one day word was going around Travelers that there were these new things out there called computers that were going to take away all of their jobs... Pretty soon they wouldn't have jobs. And so everybody was talking about it. They were scared they wouldn't have a way to make a living.

"But, of course, it ended up being more jobs were created with the computers than there were...."

Hamilton's story about Apollo 8 is amazing...
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Computer History Museum Publishes Memories of the Programmer for NASA's Moon Missions

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  • She was born in 1936 - how does that make her 81?

    • by berj ( 754323 )
      One click would have done it for you. From the *very first page* of the *very first link* in the summary:

      Oral History of Margaret Hamilton Interviewed by: David C. Brock Recorded April 13, 2017 Boston, MA

  • It is hard to believe these days what they achieved with such primitive hardware. Today we have pocket devices that could far outperform everything NASA had back then but it shows you what proper engineering can do. (pro tip: don't waste 90% of your compute power on meaningless graphics displays).

    For those interested I strongly recommend this video [youtube.com] on the Apollo guidance computer.

    • by kmoser ( 1469707 )
      It's not graphics displays that make today's software relatively crappy. It's the low quality of software engineers who created the software.
    • You may call it "primitive" but for the time, it was actually a very advanced machine. Many control minicomputers probably didn't reach its abilities until at least a decade later. After all, in 1962, it was the first (semi-)serially-produced computer made using ICs.
    • The software also had a very limited scope and well defined functionality. Under those circumstances many programmers today could do the work.

      How many software project failures have there been that failed because of scope creep and poor specifications? I'd venture it would be a high percentage.

    • by Burdell ( 228580 )

      My father worked on the Saturn V guidance computer (more properly, the LVDC, the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer). IBM built it, and Dad's group at NASA built a hardware-in-the-loop simulation to flight-certify it. He's told me stories about the weird ways that computer worked.

      They also figured out a way to run an LVDC to just before the TLI burn (Trans Lunar Injection, the engine firing that took them from Earth orbit and put them on the path to the Moon) and halt it. After launch, when the tracking statio

    • by Tim Doran ( 910 )

      CuriousMarc on YouTube documented a restoration of a real Apollo Guidance Computer - https://www.youtube.com/playli... [youtube.com]

      It's a very in-depth look at an unusual and cool machine.

  • Full Interview Video (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jodka ( 520060 ) on Sunday March 13, 2022 @11:38PM (#62355127)

    The full video interview is here [youtube.com].

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