Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Space Flight

摘要

Spaceflight enthusiasts disappointed by the lack of popular interest in interplanetary adventure should take heart in two developments: first, the plethora of new literature on project Apollo; and second, the fact that while space fans may be fewer than in ages past, they are almost certainly better. Empowered by an internet full of simulation software, astronautics addicts have traded Star Wars for systems engineering, showing their devotion by mastering the switches, buttons, and readouts of Apollo's "man-machine" interface. It is this seemingly snooze-worthy system of technologies that David Mindell describes with great flair in his much-anticipated Digital Apollo. Coming on the heels of his work on human-factors engineering and analog computing, Mindell's exhaustive research on the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) has spawned a history of both the groundbreaking digital electronic computers that steered Apollo spacecraft to the moon and the analog organic computers-especially the astronauts of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration-who designed, refined, and "flew" these marvelous gizmos.