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> 
> In the USA, I think people are calling this the
> dumbing down of America.  Disorganized?  Get a Palm
> Pilot.  Out of touch?  Get a cell phone.  Don't know
> the answer?  Ask a computer.
> 
> The Saturn rocket (most powerful machine made by man)
> was designed with a slide rule and without flight
> testing or prototypes.  The Space Shuttle was designed
> with a slide rule.  These people were THINKING.
> 
> Chris

Uh, let's see: Apollo1, burned on the launch pad killing all 3 astronauts. 
Apollo 2-6 were unmanned test flights. Manned flight resumed with Apollo 7. 
Apollo 13 blew up nearly killing all 3 Astronauts.

Apollo 8 was the first full-up launch of a Saturn 5 with all three stages. Test 
flights were planned, but scrapped because NASA heard the Russians were sending 
a manned flight to the moon. Our guys survived, the Russians died.

Apollo 9 stayed in earth orbit to test the lander. Apollo 10 went back to the 
moon to test the lander in moon orbit.  A software glitch in a navigation 
computer caused the lander to go out of control for a time.  The programmers 
found the bug and the Astronauts reprogrammed the computer by punching in the 
hexadecimal codes as they were read to them over the radio.

Not a paragon of organization and bug free development. There wasn't time with
a 
race going on.

NASA and the Saturn 5 designers made extensive use of computers. They used
slide 
rules for the simple stuff but they wrote programs for the orbital mechanics 
calculations.

I have a Palm Pilot because I can't remember 300 phone numbers.  I guess that 
makes me unorganized.

That said, overengineering is a problem. No need for a microprocessor
controlled 
belt buckle with 8 meg of RAM.

Of course that kind of stuff disappears after the fad buyers get one and the 
rest of us refuse to be suckered in by that crap.

Rick

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