Top ten stories about the moon and technology

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

I’ve enjoyed watching ITV’s various moon-related programmes over the last few days, culminating in last night’s docu-drama (dreadful name) about the moon landing.

And even though the greatest “drama” they could rustle up at the end was for a broken switch (”The switch has broken” “So it has” “How did that happen?” “I don’t know” “Let’s ask Houston if it’s on or not” “Okay” “It’s on” How will I switch it off?” “With my handy fountain pen” “That should work”) the programme as a whole really drummed home the message of what an incredible feat the moon landing was.

And, naturally, being of an IT bent, I started idly wondering about the horsepower inside the Apollo 11 and the lander. It’s well documented/alleged that the computer inside the Apollo 11 was roughly similar in power to a calculator, but naturally the reality is so much more complicated. You can compare numbers of transistors, amount of memory, lines of code – but fundamentally you’re comparing peanuts with horses. (more…)