Posted by David Sherman on Friday, July 21, 2006 at 1:54PM :
In Reply to: Going to the moon posted by Gil on Friday, July 21, 2006 at 6:57AM :
The important thing is that they knew how to do the calculations manually and so they knew when the computer's answer didn't look right. That's what we've lost now that computers figure everything. A computer can produce an answer that's complete garbage but nobody notices because they don't have that feel for approximately what the answer should be, like those old engineers did. That's probably why the original space shuttle pilots demanded windows in the cockpit and the ability to fly it manually. In the initial design, there were no windows and the computer was supposed to do everything.
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