What Every Engineer and Coder Owes to Apollo 8
The space mission that saved tech innovation and the spirit of adventure
There comes a point in every discovery where it seems like time stops and the scale ever so slightly tips toward victory.
That moment is like riding an old wooden roller coaster, the train of carts slowly clicking up that first, massive hill until the car you’re sitting in reaches the crest. Right then, for one slow second, there is quiet. There is stillness. Then the car tips over the edge and all bets are off. Rushing down. Into the unknown. Faster and faster. This is the moment of breakthrough.
For technology and science in the last century, that roller coaster crest moment came on the cold winter morning of December 24, 1968. On that Christmas Eve, the people of the world collectively experienced the rareness of tipping over the peak as the crew of Apollo 8 went to the moon and then came back home.
As Robert Kurson describes in his book Rocket Men, the impact of this mission went far beyond the exploration of another celestial body. Because of where this mission fell within the timeline of the space race of the 1960s, and the way that technology was advancing both in the private and public sectors of the United States and the world, there has perhaps been no greater…
