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Her Software Put Men on the Moon. Fifty Years Later, Margaret Hamilton got a Glowing Moonlit Tribute

posted by martyb on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the Women-in-Programming dept.

aristarchus writes:

Story at CNN:

The first footsteps on the moon belonged to two men, but they may never have made it there if not for Margaret Hamilton.

The software engineer developed the onboard computer programs that powered NASA's Apollo missions, including the 1969 moon landing.

So, it's only fitting that in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, a portrait of the bespectacled pioneer reflected the light of the moon.

Not just Hidden Figures? Click on the full article to see the display.

Hamilton effectively invented the term "software engineer" with her work developing the Apollo guidance computer, the lifeline for astronauts that controlled the spacecraft, Google said in announcing the artistic honor.

She regularly brought her young daughter, Lauren, to work with her on weekends, according to the search giant. Lauren played in the simulator that her mother built to test in-flight programs and inadvertently led Hamilton to rethink her strategy.

Lauren once crashed the simulator, ending the mission prematurely by hitting a button while the craft was in flight.

So, Hamilton programmed backstops to prevent an astronaut from doing the same midflight, a mistake that would yield far more dire consequences in space, Google says.

"There was no second chance. We knew that," Hamilton wrote in 2009 for MIT. "We had to find a way and we did."

Whatever you do, do not push the big red button, M'kay?

See also: These 6 Accidents Nearly Derailed Apollo 11's Mission to the Moon
How to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by sshelton76 on Saturday July 20 2019, @07:22AM (3 children)

    by sshelton76 (7978) on Saturday July 20 2019, @07:22AM (#869320)

    As the father of a young daughter, I can say without a doubt there is no better way to test random combinations of input than to put your young daughter in front of the device and let her poke at the buttons. This has led to a number of discoveries and innovations including the now ubiquitous Molly Guard https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/molly-guard [wiktionary.org]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @11:09AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @11:09AM (#869343)

    That was automated long long ago because is not even close to be good enough.
    See chargen [wikipedia.org] and Monte_Carlo_method [wikipedia.org] for exhaustive testing methods.

    • (Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Saturday July 20 2019, @08:23PM

      by sshelton76 (7978) on Saturday July 20 2019, @08:23PM (#869458)

      I bet my daughter can still out perform it. We call her Elly the destroyer for a reason.

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday July 21 2019, @06:29AM

    by Bot (3902) on Sunday July 21 2019, @06:29AM (#869554) Journal

    If you run out of young daughters try pets. The black female cat that barfed fuzz on the trackpad causing a hard crash is a champion in my household.

    --
    Account abandoned.