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Computer crashes repeatedly in final 4 minutes of Apollo landing
The MIT team located the source of the error with only two or three hours to spare. In anticipation of a possible abort, Aldrin had insisted that the spacecraft’s rendezvous radar remain turned on. This system pointed upward, allowing it to track Collins in the command module. During the descent, the dial for the rendezvous radar had been turned to the wrong setting. Normally, this shouldn’t have caused a problem. But because of a design defect, every once in a while the system would bombard the computer with unnecessary requests. It was the worst kind of error: erratic, subtly dangerous, and difficult to reproduce.
Who needs software?
The original document laying out the engineering requirements of the Apollo mission didn’t even mention the word software, MIT aeronautics professor David Mindell writes in his book Digital Apollo. “Software was not included in the schedule, and it was not included in the budget.” […] By mid-1968, more than 400 people were working on Apollo’s software, because software was how the US was going to win the race to the moon.