Apollo Software

[Don Shepherd]

(08-22-2016 10:47 AM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  

(08-21-2016 05:18 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  

Interestingly, Margaret Hamilton, portrayed in the link above as the master mind behind the Apollo Guidance Computer, hardly gets any mention in the excellent book "Digital Apollo". I wonder which recollection comes closer to the actual historic facts?

It looks like she may have been a manager of programmers, as opposed to being a programmer herself. Perhaps she did write some of that code, I don't know.

One thing puzzled me about the statement of one of the AGC programmers. He said his code is still on the moon and, not surprisingly, he felt really good about that. Not to take anything away from him--those folks truly achieved something great--but isn't the only thing remaining on the moon the lower, descent stage of the LM, and wasn't the LM AGC in the ascent stage? Wouldn't it have to have been to navigate the LM back to rendezvous with the command module? And after rendezvous, wasn't the ascent stage jettisoned and it would impact the moon and be destroyed? So the AGC would be destroyed too?

I just don't remember the specifics of the Apollo procedures.