Hello Bj”rn,

On Saturday July 20 2019 12:09, you wrote to All:

 BF>    Well, Margaret, now 82 and still kicking, by then 32, did make it
 BF> happen. There were no computers onboard any of the vehicles, at least
 BF> not what we call computers nowadays. It was more like the first ever
 BF> embedded systems.

 BF>    Those systems were designed to be foolproof. Absolutely 100%
 BF> foolproof, not 99.99%. And she made it happen. Still today they are
 BF> regarded as the most reliable embedded systems ever created, with
 BF> error recovery functions that still to this day put shame on Microsoft
 BF> and other major software companies.

Hmm... What I read today is that at 300 meters the "computer" in the lunar 
lander crashed for the fourth time in five minutes. It rebooted relatively 
quicky without loss of information but for seconds Armstrong and Aldrin were 
flying blind without height information.

Armstrong was selected for his cold-bloodedness and it paid off. He did not 
loose his nerve during the landing. With a "computer"crashing every other 
minute, unexpected obstructions at the landing site and only 18 seconds of fuel 
left in the end, I do not think many others would have pulled it off.

When at age 17, I went to university in 1963 and took astronomy as a secondary, 
I was introduced at the Utrecht Observatory. With my fellow students I looked 
at the moon through the "Big" Telescope. The 25 cm Merz refractor. Max Kuperus, 
the then bachelor showing us around said: people are going to walk there and we 
are going to live to see it. Six years later it happened and I lived to see it.

I sure have lived in interesting times...

Cheers, Michiel

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