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Margaret Hamilton inside an Apollo command module simulator

Margaret Hamilton, the brilliant mathematician behind the then-nascent field of software engineering and the lead programmer of the Apollo effort that put humanity on the moon, has passed away at the age of ninety.

But what a life Hamilton had!  Early on she demonstrated a prowess for mathematics.  She followed that into higher education and wound up at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  There she was brought aboard NASA to work on the computer systems for the Apollo spacecraft.  It was during this phase of her career that Hamilton developed error-correction code that in the case of Apollo 11 kept the vessel from disaster during landing.

Here are the famous photos of Margaret Hamilton with the enormous pile of computer code that she and her team developed for Apollo 11:

After the Apollo program ended, Hamilton started her own company ...

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A short while ago the four astronauts of Artemis II successfully splashed down in the ocean off the coast of San Diego.  They made it!!

(I had been afraid of this mission.  They were in my prayers a LOT.)

For over a week I have been tuned in whenever I could to NASA’s official YouTube feed, usually streaming it to the high-def television set in my living room.  I couldn’t help but reflect on how our parents and grandparents (and now even some GREAT-grandparents) huddled around the tiny screen of the family TV to watch blurry black and white images from the Moon during the Apollo program over fifty years ago.  And now we get to watch it in full-size resolution in beautiful color straight from the Moon and across the Internet to our devices.

I’ve been hanging on everything that the crew of Artemis II did, and when ...

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Godspeed Artemis II.

Or as Walter Cronkite would have said:

“Go Baby, GO!!!”

Watching Artemis II launch, I felt like a seven-year-old kid all over again.  It was 45 years ago this month that the Columbia launched on the very first mission for the space shuttle system.  I had wanted to finally watch real astronauts go up into space.  The mission had been delayed a few times already and I didn’t want to miss it.  Finally, about ten minutes before time to head out to school at 8:30 in the morning, Columbia ignited and began its ascent.  I couldn’t tear my eyes off the screen but Dad said “Okay, it’s up.  NOW can we go?!”

I truly hope this will be a successful mission.  I’ve harbored a lot of concerns about Artemis II.  It would be such a shot in the arm for national morale… and the feelings ...

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Dear NASA administrators:

I have a member of my family who was part of the team at Kennedy Space Center in 1986.  On January 27th he begged the higher-ups not to launch Challenger.  The space shuttle was clearly not rated for launch in such below-freezing temperatures.
My relative’s pleas were ignored.  We know what happened.
I confess that my own mind is not of the caliber of those who are engaged in America’s space effort.  My formal training is in history, not aeronautics and engineering.  But I’m still begging you: do not launch the Artemis II mission tomorrow.  In fact, don’t launch it at all.
The vehicle has too many issues that are being ignored, just as Challenger‘s were ignored for sake of the chance to have a successful mission.  The materials – especially the heat shield – are definitely not as sound as the ones that the
...
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Forty years ago today came the end of the childhood of my generation.

The space shuttle Challenger was blown to bits shortly after liftoff, taking with it the lives of seven of the best crew members that NASA has ever filled a mission with.

A few months earlier, I had read something fascinating: that those people who were old enough could remember where exactly they were when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and then when they heard about John F. Kennedy being assassinated.  And I wondered if there would ever be an event like that in my own life.

Challenger was such an event.  The first of too many.

Yes, I indeed remember that day forty years ago as clearly as if it were transpiring today.  I was eleven years old, going on twelve, in sixth grade at Community Baptist School in Reidsville, North Carolina.  I had ...

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“Good luck, Mister Gorsky!”

Okay, there was never a “Mister Gorsky” and Armstrong never said that.  But everyone else is posting “One small step for man…” and I just had to be the oddball tonight.
Happy Fiftieth Anniversary to Apollo 11’s touchdown in Mare Tranquilitatis!
...
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1968 was perhaps the most turbulent year of the most turbulent decade of modern history.  Assassinations, wars, upheaval – sometimes peaceful and sometimes not – and the looming threat of global annhiliation… it seemed that the whole world had gone mad.

So maybe it took three men a distance of more than two hundred thousand miles from that same world to put things into humbling perspective for the rest of us.
It was fifty years ago tonight, on Christmas Eve in 1968, that the crew of Apollo 8 ended one of the most-watched television broadcasts in history with a special message.  William Anders, James Lovell, and Frank Borman took turns reading from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.  Half a century later, their glad tidings from orbit above the Moon has lost none of its magnificent potency.
Here it is:
A short while earlier, the crew had become
...
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Nearly thirty years after the Challenger disaster, it is now coming out that the first “regular citizen” to fly on a space shuttle mission was originally going to be an eight-foot tall yellow Muppet loved and adored by what has become generations of devoted fans.

Strange, but true: Big Bird almost had a seat on Challenger for its final flight.

In the new documentary I Am Big Bird, the most massive fowl on Sesame Street was in early talks to fly as he’d never flown before.  Muppeteer Caroll Spinney would have gone aboard Challenger for mission STS-51L.  It was meant to be something that would enthuse and excite children about the space program.

Can you imagine that?  Big Bird himself in orbit around the Earth, talking to children via live television.  To say nothing of what would have been some amazing footage for Sesame Street itself.

There was one, ...

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