Kevin Simler

My entire life, it's been true that "humans have been to the moon." I always kinda took it for granted. So it's been a real treat (not to mention a bit of a mindfuck) getting to relive the Apollo 11 mission this past month, in honor of the 50th anniversary. Some thoughts

0. Man, I wish I could have been a 16 to 22-year-old in the summer of '69. Can you even imagine how powerful that experience would have been? (Maybe some of you can because you actually lived it?!?!)

1. It's _astonishing_ to me that the mission actually succeeded. It would be an ambitious project _today_. But 50 years ago, so many new things had to be invented. And it all went mostly right?? 400,000 people worked on the project. The complexity is just staggering.

2. To do all of those new things, there had to be some real "live players" at the helm. More on live vs. dead players here:https://twitter.com/KevinSimler/status/1130175183564656641 …

3. I heard an interview with Hans Zimmer where he described Apollo as an epic art project. I like that framing a lot. IMO the project didn't justify itself _scientifically_. But it was an unparalleled _aesthetic_ achievement.

Apollo 11 was performance art. An audience of billions. Eight years in the making. One showing only. Arguably the most sublime thing ever performed.

4. Using computers for realtime control was pretty new at the time. It's easy to take for granted now, but in the 60s, computers were typically ~room-sized and communicated by readouts. To hook one up to some actuators and use for mission-critical tasks was

5. Actually only fine-grained tasks (like landing) were controlled by computer. The mission as a whole was controlled by a massive cyborg. Three people and some electronics up in space + thousands of ppl and many computers on the ground. All linked over a few thin comms channels.