modern computers and NASA's infancy

[bluedolphin]

would one of today's top end home pc's been powerful enough to handle all the data and computing requirements to launch of one of NASA's eary ventures into space?

[Headtime]

I would have probably thought so... Isn't there an apocryphal story stating that a modern mobile-phone has more computing power than the on-board computers which allowed the NASA lunar module to land on the moon?

Howerver, having said that I wouldn't trust my infernal-steam-powered-Pentium-Charles-Babbage-abacus to launch anything into space...When it can't even receive more than 7 emails without crashing!

[Caladon]

some of my family live in florida and i go every year....making sure i always visit NASA. As it happens, a pocket calculator has more "power" and "logic" than the room sized computers of the 1960's. Then they knew the calculations they had to formulate and the computers only made those calculations faster. Today super computers with liquid anti freeze being washed over part of the insides to keep it cool, monitors the heat of the spaceshuttles nose, its trajectory from millimetre to millimetre. sorry that was long winded. the answer to your question is yes lol

[Spellmaster]

The onboard computer on the Apollo XI lunar module had a memory of 16K, according to NASA themselves, so I think a 3GHZ machine would definitely just about cope!