Digital Apollo
The incredible story of how human pilots and automated systems worked together to achieve the ultimate achievement in flight—the lunar landings of NASA’s Apollo program As Apollo 11’s Lunar Module descended toward the moon under automatic control, a program alarm in the guidance computer’s software nearly caused a mission abort. Neil Armstrong responded by switching off the automatic mode and taking direct control. He stopped monitoring the computer and began flying the spacecraft, relying on skill to land it and earning praise for a triumph of human over machine. In Digital Apollo, engineer-historian David Mindell takes this famous moment as a starting point for an exploration of the relationship between humans and computers in the Apollo program. In each of the six Apollo landings, the astronaut in command seized control from the computer and landed with his hand on the stick. Mindell recounts the story of astronauts’ desire to control their spacecraft in parallel with the history of the Apollo Guidance Computer. From the early days of aviation through the birth of spaceflight, test pilots and astronauts sought to be more than “spam in a can” despite the automatic controls, digital computers, and software developed by engineers. Digital Apollo examines the design and execution of each of the six Apollo moon landings, drawing on transcripts and data telemetry from the flights, astronaut interviews, and NASA’s extensive archives.
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- If anyone wants to get a deeper understanding of the Apollo Guidance Computer I can recommend the book "Digital Apollo" by David A. Mindell. It puts the AGC into the context of the fly-by-wire efforts that started with airplanes and moved on to spacecraft.
The book "The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation" by Frank O'Brien is also good and goes into more technical detail. I'm told he gets a few things wrong, but it's a generally good treatment. There are several videos on YouTube that discuss the AGC at various levels of detail, including the excellent series by CuriousMarc where he and his team restore an AGC into working order, an astonishing accomplishment.
- A few books that I whole-heartedly recommend:
- "Digital Apollo", a book about HCI, the tension between automation and human-in-the-loop, the history of systems engineering and minutae of each Apollo landing through those lenses. If you want a heavy dose of interesting, inspiring and thought-provoking HCI and embedded engineering lessons and anecdotes in context of the most thrilling examples possible you'll love this.
- "Sunburst and Luminary", the really quite charming and lively memoir by Apollo software engineer Don Eyles.
- "Apollo" by Cox and Murray, a go-to general history of the Apollo program that emphasizes program management and engineering far more than the astronauts.
This + the CuriousMarc videos and you'll feel spaceflight mini expert high, and be quite capable of maybe flying a landing in one of the emulators, actually understand the technical jargon in any of the Apollo landing videos or the Apollo 13 incident video, or appreciate some AGC source code.
- This reminds me of an oft recommended book "Digital Apollo". One of the driving topics is the human interaction component and the difference in designing a fully automated system versus one that is designed with an operator that can intervene. If I recall correctly, the book presents a dichotomy between the rocketeers and pilots (automate entirely and strap people on for a ride vs design a system controlled by a human).
I think they both have their place, but I think acknowledging it as a system design choice is so helpful even in basic business processes (how will I handle exceptions, how will the person remember to handle a rare exception).
I find myself thinking of this problem frequently. We have lots of modern words for it like observability but I think that removes one a bit from the actual problem.
- If you want to read about this in fascinating detail, I highly recommend the book "Digital Apollo" by David A. Mindell.
David's book spends a lot of time dwelling on the tension between highly automated systems and the role of the human in them, and the HCI factors of the Apollo missions. They also recap each landing through that lens, including the major changes done to the Lunar Module UI (physical + software) and the landing script/programs for each mission and how things worked out in practice and how it was debriefed after. If you want the insight look at the decision to go for precision landing, how (and how well) it was achieved and how everyone involved felt about it, this is probably your best one-stop go-to.
And for anyone working in embedded UI, or around automation, etc. it's a wondeful mind-sharpener with many lessons in an inspiring applied context.
The Apollo user interface and computer were so state of the art that many of the problems and solutions remain quite similar today. I work in a similar area (cars, with ever-increasing amounts of automation, driver assistance and connectivity) and some of the debates and on-the-job exchanges and meeting notes cited in the book could be straight out of my day job 60 years later with only minute differences. Some of the "Lessons on Software Development"-type docs penned by Apollo engineers in the aftermath of the program (trade-offs of platform approaches and HW abstractions vs. optimization, how to get a handle on quality and testing, etc.) also still read absolutely modern to this day, almost with greater summarizing clarity than what decades of paradigms and jargon have slathered on top.
- Difficult to get into or it, but assemble in orbit... Read Digital Apollo. The moon is rocky. Really really rocky. You need enough fuel/thrust for your remote sensing to idle while Houston proceses you options.
What if spherical comes up against a rock or crater wall as big as it is? Splat.
- Digital Apollo by David A. Mindell. An excellent book that describes how the Apollo computer was developed.
Dealers of Lighting Xerox Parc and the dawn of computer age by Michael A. Hiltzik. If you're interested in knowing where the PC as we know it today originated from.
Others have already suggested The Dream Machine which was a book that once started I couldn't stop reading and finished it in about a week.
Edit: Maybe not exactly the book that you might be interested in but I read Mindstorms by Papert and I think his work on education through the use of computers was groundbreaking. Very interesting book.
