The APOLLO COMPUTER CRASHED 5 TIMES on the Way to the MOON - and Still Landed

Six miles above the moon, Apollo 11's computer started throwing alarm codes the crew had never seen: 1202, then 1201. On the way down, it dropped everything and restarted five times. The landing should have been aborted. Instead, Eagle touched down with Neil Armstrong flying the last few hundred feet by hand. This is how that computer was built to survive its own crashes: an MIT lab that bet on brand-new chips, software literally woven into copper wire, a handwritten list of alarm codes in Mission Control, and a 26-year-old guidance officer who had seconds to say "go." If you watched that landing on television, tell us where you were in the comments. Subscribe to Applied Innovations for more stories of the projects that shaped America. Sources: NASA, Apollo 11 Mission Report (MSC-00171, 1969); Don Eyles, "Tales from the Lunar Module Guidance Computer" (2004); Jack Garman, NASA JSC Oral History (2001); MIT Instrumentation Laboratory Digital Development Memo #483 (1969); NASA Apollo Lunar Surface Journal; Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. #apollo11 #moonlanding #nasa #computerhistory #americanhistory