How powerful was the Apollo 11 computer?
by Grant Robertson on July 20, 2009... Published on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing
I've often wondered about how the computers of today, especially "Smart Phones" and "Tablet PC's", would compare to the equipment used by the early US Astronauts of the Gemini and Apollo programs. According to the above article, there is no comparison really... to get a useful comparison you need to go back to the IBM XT PC, which was released in March of 1983, which by today's tech standards is a whopping 14 years after Neil Armstrong's July-1969 Moonwalk.
So even a simple cell phone that a lot of folks (like me) still use today has a LOT more computing power than the early astronauts used for their missions. Think about that a bit... especially the next time your cell / smart phone acts up, or fails completely. Would you want to fly to the moon and back dependent on a computer as advanced as your phone?
:-)
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