Best of the Web: How Apollo Made It Home To Earth - AVweb

It was a dead stick “Descend Via The STAR” LNAV/VNAV arrival with speed brakes only and exponentially more complexity - the epitome of trajectory management with consequences far greater than an FAA violation. At 23 minutes and 39 seconds into this video the statement is made that the briefest phase of flight requires the largest computer program of the entire mission. In 1969 a 4KB IBM commercial business computer was approximately 6ft wide by 4 feet deep by 4 feet tall requiring a dedicated climate controlled room. Apollo computers must obviously have been more miniaturized. This video is a masterpiece of both concision and understatement.

John Kliewer