EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 22

P o w e r Bu dg e t e r set adrift, the LM folks “topped us off” with what was left in its batteries, giving the crew a margin that ensured their return. In all of the Apollo missions— some more than others—Murphy’s Law was in effect. But Aaron found that the Apollo systems “usually gave you warnings, if you knew how to look at the data.” With the benefit of hindsight, “one can usually see the problems coming on.” Aaron’s NASA career extended well past Apollo, and he applied the lessons learned in that program to space shuttle and space station engineering management. Particularly in the shuttle program, Aaron managed software efforts that quickly came to dominate platform development. Compared with Mercury, Gemini or Apollo, software complexity in space systems grew dramatically with the shuttle, where HAL/S 22 EE Times | Apollo | July 20, 2009 served as the high-level language used to advance NASA’s coding. There was always a memory squeeze—early shuttle flights still used core memory—but Aaron said that care and discipline in software development had provided a mere “15 percent overhead versus assembly coding. Without this [productive] leap in software, we’d have never gotten the orbiter off the ground.” A solid background in systems engineering was essential in an increasingly software-driven world of manned space flight. “I could speak these [software] guys’ language, but with an understanding of the hardware,” Aaron recalls. Among the NASA colleagues he most admired were Maxime (Max) Faget, father of much of the spacecraft design from Mercury to the shuttle, whom Aaron calls “a real systems engineer,” and Don Ara- bian, guardian of the Mission Evaluation Room, who instisted “that you follow the [rules of] physics” in decision-making. As for the space program’s future, Aaron believes NASA needs “to put as much emphasis on building test hardware and real systems as they do on producing paper.”p

EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009

Apollo - July 20, 2009
Contents
Applying the Lessons of Apollo
Why Did We Go to the Moon?
In the Trenches: Profiles of the Engineers Who Made Apollo Go
Apollo Perspectives: Video Interview with Filmmaker David Sington
Virtual Teardown: Apollo Spacesuit
Virtual Teardown: The ‘Genesis’ Rock
Apollo Chip Teardown: Unit Logic Device
Ted Sorensen on Apollo
Soviet Space Firsts
Apollo Reader Forum
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Apollo - July 20, 2009
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Contents
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Applying the Lessons of Apollo
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 4
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Why Did We Go to the Moon?
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 6
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 7
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 8
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - In the Trenches: Profiles of the Engineers Who Made Apollo Go
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 10
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 11
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 12
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 13
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 14
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 15
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 16
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 17
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 18
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 19
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 20
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 21
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 22
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Apollo Perspectives: Video Interview with Filmmaker David Sington
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 24
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Virtual Teardown: Apollo Spacesuit
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 26
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 27
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 28
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Virtual Teardown: The ‘Genesis’ Rock
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 30
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 31
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Apollo Chip Teardown: Unit Logic Device
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 33
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 34
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 35
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Ted Sorensen on Apollo
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 37
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 38
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Soviet Space Firsts
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 40
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 41
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - Apollo Reader Forum
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 43
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 44
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 45
EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 46
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