Would a moonshot mission be possible?

<QUOTE>today's personal computers are more powerful than all of the computers together which were used to operate the 1969 moon mission.</QUOTE>

And Charles Lindberg was able to fly across the Atlantic Ocean before computers were in existence -- so, you can say that the 1969 computers were vastly more powerful than those that existed at the time Lindberg flew the Spirt of St. Lewis.

<QUOTE>I have no intention or qualification to do so in reality!</QUOTE>

Why not? Others managed to do it.

<QUOTE>to operate a space mission (especially a moonshot) from a single desktop computer?...</QUOTE>

Even today, you won't find more than a single desktop computer in a control room because each person working there is paying attention to one aspect of the mission.

<QUOTE>is this just a case of relating to computer memory and processing capacity?</QUOTE>

No.

If you're thinking about the computer aboard the Apollo capsule, then it has to do with what you can do with it rather than how much processing power it has. You don't need a sophisticated computer to command the spacecraft, you just need one that gets the job done. It's like programming your kitchen microwave oven, and with the same interface (a single line readout with numbers and a number keypad); you can do a lot with it, and you don't need an iPhone behind it to get the same job done. If you have a GPS, the part that gets your actual position and velocity has a puny processing power; most of the number crunching goes instead to displaying the image on the screen, because matching the radio signals from the GPS satellites to get a position is comparatively simpler.

And also, remember the reliability of the circuits. If your iPhone breaks down, you're bummed but you can live. If your onboard computer breaks down, you're as closest to being dead as you can be, because humans can't navigate in space the same way they do on land. (If you find the novel "Space" by James Michener, leaf down to the last third of the chapter "Twins" and read the description of the docking procedure in space. It's examplified with cars at constant speed.)

Greetings,

In answer to your question, basically, yes.

In practical terms, not really. You would require quite a lot of instruments and systems just to keep the information flowing to your computer so that the software could process it into some sort of order.

Plus a shed load of money.

Good luck

Hi Rik, sorry I'm not going to address your question here because others have done so already extremely well :), instead I'm going to address some extremely ignorant claims made by 'Welcome To The APOCALYPSE'.

- The moon landing was real, all six of them.

- ALL the many hours of original video footage from the Apollo missions are available with the exception of the few hours from Apollo 11. Companies like Spacecraft Films have put all Apollo footage available onto DVDs (I have several of them). The 'missing' Apollo 11 footage is nothing we haven't see already, just slightly sharper.

- Certain blueprints are 'missing' for many non-Apollo crafts in history, from cars to aircraft, hence it's irrelevent.

- The USSR failed to to reach the moon because their 'moon rocket' the N1-L3 blew up at every test, hence effectively grounding their moon program. The closest point of the Van Allen belt to earth is a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). EVERY spacecraft in low earth orbit passes through that region of the Van Allen belt upto 5 times a day (taking up to 23 minutes to pass through), and yet no astronaut has ever become ill as a result, not even during spacewalks with only their spacesuits to protect them. Ordinary laptops brought onto the Space Station would crash as they passed through the VA belts via the SAA, and yet the astronauts are fine. Hence the Van Allen belts are not a health problem today, and therefore were not a problem during Apollo.

- The no stars argument is an example of laziness. Go to google and look at all the video, film and photos taken of astronauts and the Space Station and Shuttle in low earth orbit and we see no stars. Look at closeup photos taken by Hubble of the planets and we see no stars. Look at the photos taken by Voyager of the planets and theirs moons and we see no stars. Even the IMAX movies of the Space Station, Shuttle and Hubble shows no stars. Look at all closeup photos of the edge of the moon taken by telescopes on earth and we see no stars. No stars is NORMAL! Btw, a UV telescope was taken to the moon by Apollo 16, where it was used to take photos of the stars and earth, showing features never seen before (i.e. new discoveries). The UV photos with the earth and stars have been used to work out where they were taken from, and they all point to the site of Apollo 16 on the moon.

- The moon's gravity is 1/6th of earth's, therefore to make gravity appear to match earth's (i.e. for dust and objects to fall at the correct speed), Apollo footage will need to be sped up by the square root of 6, which is about 2.46. When that's applied to Apollo footage, they look comical, like old silent movies. Hence the footage could not be simulated by filming on earth and slowing it down, otherwise sci-fi movies would have matched Apollo footage and then better the low gravity seen, and yet that has never happened, not even in the highest budget movies.

- Again an ignorant observation. The flag only moves when astronauts are touching the flag or moving the flagpole. There is also a crossbar along the top of the flag to hold it upright (imaging the flagpole and crossbar as an upsidedown letter L).

- There is a complete different between pristine moon rocks picked up from the surface of the moon (840 pounds) and lunar meteorites that have burned up on their way through the atmosphere before hitting the ground. We also only identified such meteorites as coming from the moon AFTER Apollo and the USSR's lunar samples made it possible. To date, only about 60 pounds of lunar meteorites have been found on earth.

The rest of his/her post is full of equally ignorant moon hoax claims. I have nothing against people believing in conspiracies if they want to, but sadly most conspiracy claims are based upon ignorance and stupidity, where personal bias, lack of common sense, and often pure laziness stops certain individuals from seperating fact from fiction (eg. 5 minutes on google would show why there are no stars in the Apollo photos, since that's normal for ALL photos of bright objects in space).

Ok, I'll leave it for others to get back on topic.... :)