One giant leap for mankind - RIP Neil Armstrong
Just heard the news that Neil Armstrong, the great American hero, pioneer and first man on the moon has passed on.
If you think about the technical feat that to this day would be very difficult was actually accomplished 43 years ago with less computing power than your cellphone in your pocket. I wasn't even a glimmer in my momma's eye yet. I wish I was there to see if first hand, live on TV.
Another note.
Many people don't know how close the original moon landing almost become a catastrophe.
Quote:
When the lunar module switched the landing radar on, a catastrophic chain of events occurred. Alarms began to sound because the tiny computer on board became overloaded with data from the landing radar. Mission control had no idea what the alarm meant either, other than one person luckily in the backroom staff. Based on his decision mission control gave a thumbs up for the mission to continue so long as the alarm did not go off again. But the alarm kept going off again and again. Armstrong had to override the computer and take manual control of the lunar module. It was now off course and worse still the descent engine was running low on fuel. At an altitude of five hundred feet there was only two minute of fuel left. It was time to seriously worry. They had never run so low on fuel during the training simulations and if they did they would choose to abort the descent and start again. When the Eagle eventually landed it had only 15 seconds of fuel to spare!
