Would you trust your personal computer to take you to the moon?
Asked by
PhiNotPi (
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April 28th, 2012
Recently, I read an interesting article about the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) that was on the Apollo moon missions.
In my opinion, it is amazing that a computer with such limitations (a total of 34kb of memory) could accomplish what the AGC did. As far as I know, there were no software glitches during any mission to the moon. There were two hardware problems, but neither had to do with the main computer. Since there were extreme limitations, they wrote (had to write) high-quality programs.
The end of the article asks a neat question- If you could choose to go to the moon tomorrow with a computer running Windows XP (or any other modern OS), would you still want to go?
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16 Answers
Yes.
Even SETI uses a global network of home PCs, that they can not control or check, to analyse their radiotelescope data.
Answering my own question…
No, I would not. The PC I’m using right now uses Vista. I’m going to be in lunar orbit when my guidance computer crashes and I get lost in space.
No. Not with any computer. I wouldn’t want to be in a space ship for days.
Not a fucking chance in hell.
But I would assume that NASA rolls out its own code for mission critical systems.
Yes, I would trust my computer, as long as it was backed up by all the people at the Johnson Space Center and NASA. My computer, by itself? No.
I used to work on a ship whose integrated navigation system (autopilot basically) utilized Windows NT and Zip disks (remember those?). It never crashed, but if it did it was easy to restore.
Now, my personal computer on the other hand? I’m running Vista as well and there’s not a chance I’d use it to go to space. I’d be sweating bullets the entire trip wondering if it would give me a blue screen of (quite literally this time) death. The computer on the AGC was expertly designed and had a specific mission in mind.
This is an apples to oranges comparison.
There were plenty of singular glitches during Apollo programs. There were and amazing amount of checks and balances and redundancy. Things were also built and designed to meet rigid Mil-Standards.
While today’s PC might seem like a powerhouse 40 years later, try comparing it against technology from 40 years prior to 1969.
Case closed !
On Apollo, keeping the computer was key.
On one of the missions, at liftoff the spacecraft was hit by lightning! They simply turned off the on board computer, and restarted it.
I would also like to think I wouldn’t have to land on the moon at the same time I am dealing with pop-ups, virus checks, and notifications that I haven’t recently updated my Adobe shit.
Hell No. We would have to stop ever couple thousand of miles to do an update for JAVA or ADOBE’. It’d take forever.
That depends; Windoze or Linux?
@Only138 Lmao yeah. It’s like, you’re out in space and then it asks that you download some pluggin that is absolutely needed in order to proceed. It says it’s going to reset in a minute so it can download the whole thing, but you only have like, 22 seconds of oxygen left. It would just leave you stranded out there waiting to suffocate, and then some error would occur, but you’d be dead and wouldn’t be able to take the computer’s suggestion to report the error to Microsoft. (not that it would help if you could)
If it were using the same GPS as the one is my car does, I would probably end up in a black hole and never be heard from again.
My broadband speed is so fucking superfast i’d probably overshoot the moon & find myself entering the atmosphere of uranus…..not a good look.
@Symbeline Yah, you get what I’m saying. LOL I knew you would. Cheers.
Well, my Windows Vista just had a BSoD.
I would be dead right now.
No way. The Trojan is just waiting for me to make an odd move like this and he wlll take over my pc.
The Trojan would never take me to the moon, but Hell may not be out of the question.
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