Apollo Programs and Slide Rules

[Smellincoffee]

You may have seen this picture:

Is the implication here that we went to the moon the same way sailors used to sail the seas, operating a machine according to the math in their head? I'm sympathetic to the discomfort people feel with the fact that we are so dependent on computers for day to day activities that we can no longer do tasks it used to be assumed an adult could do, like do math in one's head or read a map. However, if the picture IS implying that the astronauts did things sans computers, it is certainly and badly wrong: NASA's flight control room was filled with computers, as were the various command modules and lunar modules that composed the Apollo program. These computers executed various moves and maneuvers.

On the other hand, NASA's astronauts did apparently take slide rules with them. My question is therefore....why? Were they there just in case of catastrophic failure that required the astronauts to fly without guidance from Houston or without readings from their own instruments?

 

[Cutlass]

A simple radio failure would have taken them out of touch of Houston. The fact is, they were as careful as they could be and have gone at all. But there was a huge amount of room for failure. They really did have primitive equipment. They couldn't have taken too much computing power with them had they wanted to, it was too bulky and unreliable. Slide rules were something engineers and scientists of the day were adept at using, and comfortable using. So it makes sense that they would have been prepared to pencil and paper a solution, and they'd need the slide rule to do it.

 

[Serutan]

Strictly speaking, that poster is wrong. All the orbital calcuations, etc. were done on
IBM 360/370 computers. Some design was computer aided, some wasn't.

 

[GoodGame]

Hmmmm aren't slide rules just yet another computational device like a calculator?
Is one morally superior for using an abacus, a slide rule, a calculator, or a Math solving software?


I'd say it this way: this was done with Calculus!

 

[Winner]

Flying a spaceship without the use of some kind of a computer is next to impossible. You don't simply "eyeball" orbital plane changes and other manoeuvres, because there is nothing to give you reference. The speeds and distances involved in spaceflight are totally beyond our ability to comprehend instinctively (as opposed to, say, flying a small aeroplane).

Apollo spacecraft did use computers. Yes, the astronauts were able to use simple navigation tools to get their bearings, but without computers landing on the Moon would be as impossible for them as it was for Leonardo da Vinci.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Last night I watched an episode of From the Earth to the Moon, and part of the drama was that the computer insisted on seeing a problem where there wasn't one: Alan Shephard and the LEM pilot had to receive programming instructions from the ground just to work around it.

Perhaps some of the confusion that led to the poster above stems from how primitive NASA was in the early days, right after Eisenhower but before Kennedy's moon pledge. I just picked up Failure is Not an Option and his description of mission control is decidedly less sophisticated that of the Apollo era's control room.

 

[Winner]

I think it refers to the fact that these spaceships were designed using little advanced computer modelling. They simply had to build, try, build again, try, and progressively come up with something that worked. But again, without some computers to guide them, they'd be quite useless.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The poster is all about generational superiority and a slap in the face to today's students. It claims that back in the fifties, we all studied hard and did our homework without complaint, unlike you all today. Idiots.

Apollo 13 did show how things could go wrong.

 

[History_Buff]

Last night I watched an episode of From the Earth to the Moon, and part of the drama was that the computer insisted on seeing a problem where there wasn't one: Alan Shephard and the LEM pilot had to receive programming instructions from the ground just to work around it.

Well, as you'll know if you finish watching the series (it is excellent, except for the Apollo 13 episode), it happened a few times like that. Apollo 11 had to ignore a ton of warnings because they accidentally had both the descent and ascent radars on. And I think it was Apollo 12 that got hit by lightning, and they basically had to turn the computer off and on again.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The poster is all about generational superiority and a slap in the face to today's students. It claims that back in the fifties, we all studied hard and did our homework without complaint, unlike you all today. Idiots.

Apollo 13 did show how things could go wrong.

Part of my Grade 10 math course was using slide rules. I still have mine. I took that course in the fall of 1977.

 

[GoodGame]

The poster is all about generational superiority and a slap in the face to today's students. It claims that back in the fifties, we all studied hard and did our homework without complaint, unlike you all today. Idiots.

Apollo 13 did show how things could go wrong.

I'd say my calculus homework by pencil and textbook (integral tables and what not, NO GRAPHING CALCULATOR allowed) is the hardest!

 

[uppi]

Using a graphing calculator for calculus is cheating, anyway.

 

[GoodGame]

Using a graphing calculator for calculus is cheating, anyway.

IDK, it's not helpful if the answer don't require graphing. Though do the modern calculators do derivatives?


Actually, PC software would be my go-to if it was affordable back when I went to school.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

(it is excellent, except for the Apollo 13 episode)

Why do you say that? Is it because the episode was itself badly made, or just that they focused entirely on the ground stuff rather than the flight itself? I just figured that Tom Hanks of all people didn't want to revisit what had already been done so well.

 

[bugwar]

IDK, it's not helpful if the answer don't require graphing. Though do the modern calculators do derivatives?

Mine do. TI-89.

 

[Leifmk]

Using a graphing calculator for calculus is cheating, anyway.

The introduction of calculators in the classroom has been the worst thing that has ever happened for math education.

 

[bugwar]

The introduction of calculators in the classroom has been the worst thing that has ever happened for math education.

Didn't they say something similar when they dropped the requirement for Latin in the English courses?

 

[Leifmk]

Didn't they say something similar when they dropped the requirement for Latin in the English courses?

I have no idea, but in the case of calculators it happens to be true. Speaking as someone who's tried teaching math to high school students (in the "most difficult" level of math classes, as well -- the kind of math class you have to opt into because you are presumably interested in math), it's a huge disaster. Calculator use interferes badly, on multiple levels, with the students' supposed attempts to develop an understanding of how math works. Ban the cruddy things from schools altogether, or at least relegate them to classes where you actually need the results of an awful lot of computation.

 

[MrCynical]

I can just see someone making the same complaint a couple of centuries ago about how these new fangled slide rules are destroying students' understanding of maths, and they ought to go back to quills and parchment to truly "develop an understanding".

I might take this kind of gripe a bit more seriously if there were a few more specific examples of things you can learn from using a slide rule but not a calculator. Otherwise you're just giving the impression that you feel everyone should have to learn outdated methods just because you had to learn them.

 

[Souron]

If the context is high level math, then I would think there should be more emphasis on calculator and computer use, not less. In this context, any application would have access to computers, and the simpler problems are hardly worth learning, since they can be entered into a calculator. Harder problems must be computed digitally, and students need to learn the pitfalls of digital computing.