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Does anyone know how this fits with the many digital computers NASA used for mission planning (inc. trajectory planning)? See e.g. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search
by rrss 7y ago
Does anyone know how this fits with the many digital computers NASA used for mission planning (inc. trajectory planning)?
See e.g. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19680020624 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19680020624 for Gemini.
- trca 7y agoAccording to Hidden Figures (which to the best of my knowledge is quite accurate in representing Katherine Johnson), she actually hand checked most if not every calculation performed by the digital computers and often found miscalculations due to programming errors.
- mdiesel 7y agoDigital computers were in their infancy - at one point in that brilliant movie the critical calculations are passed through the digital computer twice and got different answers. Katherine was asked to repeat the calculations and her result was then used. The movie also shows Dorothy Vaughan teaching themselves how to program those first machines. Remember that pretty much noone had any programming experience, and there are still pitfalls today for people doing science calculations on a computer.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 19870213 7y agoJohn Glenn apparently refused to fly based on the number of the computers unless Katherine Johnson checked them first.
- divbzero 7y agoThis was dramatized in Hidden Figures but apparently based on fact: [1] > As a computer, she calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Even after NASA began using electronic computers, John Glenn requested that she personally recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before his flight aboard Friendship 7 – the mission on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth. [1]: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/katherine-johnson-the-girl-who-loved-to-count https://www.nasa.gov/feature/katherine-johnson-the-girl-who-...