Is the moon made of cheese? Of course not. But can a person walk on the surface? Not too long ago, we couldn’t answer that question. But with the help of Gladys Perkins, we soon figured out that we could send a team to the moon and have them safely land on its surface.
There was a time when the United States was behind the Soviets in the space race. Everyone had their sights set on the moon. Andrew Chaikin describes NASA’s disastrous Ranger missions. Erik Conway explains how complicated the trajectory calculations were—and to top it all off, why they often couldn’t be done in advance. To succeed, NASA’s new Surveyor program would need the capability to adjust trajectory mid-flight. Gladys Perkins made those calculations possible. But her part in this story hasn’t been well documented. Our editor Kim Huang recounts how difficult it was to get details of her story. And Vahe Peroomian explains how important it is to get these histories told to inspire the next generation to take on moonshot projects.
Finding information about Gladys Perkins was tough. We found some breadcrumbs to her story on this Hughes Aircraft blog.
If you want to read up on some of our research on Gladys Perkins, you can check out all our bonus material over at redhat.com/commandlineheroes.
Follow along with the episode transcript.
All Together Now
Invisible Intruders
Ruthless Ransomers
Menace in the Middle
Dawn of the Botnets
Lurking Logic Bombs
Terrifying Trojans
Relentless Replicants
Command Line Heroes Season 9: The Horrors of Malware
Robot as Vehicle
Robot as Threat
Humans as Robot Caretakers
Robot as Body
From Compiler: Do We Want A World Without Technical Debt?
Robot as Humanoid
Robot as Maker
Robot as Software
Robot as Servant
Command Line Heroes Season 8: Broadcasting the Robot Revolution
After the Bubble
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