Space Day

[northing]

Today is a special day.   It was 40 years ago today Apollo 11 rocketed off the pad at Cape Canaveral with the intention of making the first attempt to land on the Moon.  I just can't think of a greater achievement of the human spirit and human ingenuity than project Apollo.  This is a good day to reflect on the pinnacle of humanity's progress so

Comments

[tibolf]

Thanks for the Tip I have been wanting to see that!

[lobosolo]

BBC radio had a fascinating item this morning on the low-tech ingenuity needed for navigation at a time when there was no GPS and barely enough computing power for real-time calculations. They explained how the Primary Navigation and Guidance System (PINGS) developed at MIT was an inertial system based on three gyroscopes in perpendicular orientations, coupled to accelerometers. This was not accurate enough in itself, and minor corrections to the flight path had to be made by one of the astronauts using a sextant, triangulating on stars just like sailors hundreds of years ago.

What an amazing enterprise it was!