Moon Landing and Space Exploration

The Apollo 11 Moon Landing

• The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) on board Apollo 11 had 2048 words of RAM, which could store "temporary results" – data that is lost when there is no power.
• Each word comprised 16 binary digits (bits), making a total of 32,768 bits of RAM memory.
• This amount of memory is insufficient to store a single article, let alone thousands of emails, songs, and photographs like modern mobile phones.

Comparison with Modern Technology

• The latest phones typically have 4GB of RAM, which is approximately 1,048,576 times more memory than the Apollo computer had in RAM.
• The iPhone also has up to 512GB of ROM memory, which is more than 7 million times more than that of the guidance computer.
• The iPhone's processor runs at approximately 2490 MHz, making it over 100,000 times more powerful than the Apollo 11 computer, which ran at 0.043 MHz.

Comparison with Calculators

• The Texas Instruments TI-73 calculator, released in 1998, had slightly less ROM but eight times more RAM than the Apollo guidance computer.
• The TI-84 calculator, released in 2004, had 32 times more RAM and more than 14,500 times more ROM than the Apollo computer.
• The calculators, designed for students, were more powerful than the computer that landed man on the moon.

Advantages of Modern Technology in the Moon Landing

• With modern software development tools, the software development time would have been significantly faster.
• The user interface would have been easier to use, potentially reducing stress in critical situations.