What Made Apollo a Success? (1971) [pdf]

What did your grandfather do and which astronauts signed the letter?

That's one hell of a memento, good luck with the filling of those shoes. At least you have something to aim for!

I've heard or read of this before, the first bullet, and can't help but to compare this to what has happened with the 737 Max 8 current issue.

From the PDF comes: "Apollo gains a measure of simplicity from features simple both in design and operation, complex in design but simple to operate, or simple by being passive in function. The concept of simple design and simple operation is best illustrated by the Apollo rocket-propulsion systems (fig. 2-2)."

All of these apply to software development as well, but especially that first point. I'm on a project right now that has a bunch of things that can be simplified. Some duplicated state, multiple code paths for computing the same thing, etc. When problems arise it's very tricky to debug and it's almost always caused by that complexity. The temptation is to just add another layer of checks or validation on top of it or make a slight tweak. But of course the best path is to just roll up your sleeves and work to remove as many moving parts as you can. Most of our bug fixes have actually resulted in substantially fewer lines of code. Anyway, the point is to always try and keep things simple, and even better to make sure that principle is followed in the initial stages of design.

> Test exhaustively.

> It's notable that this was published before Apollo 13

One of the causes of the Apollo 13 service module explosion was damage caused during a pre-flight test. The SM included a pipe whose only role was to drain out oxygen after pre-flight launch-pad tests. It had no in-flight role. The pipe was damaged during assembly (nobody noticed) and failed to drain the oxygen tank. The test team instead decided to drain the tank by heating the oxygen using an in-tank heater and in effect boiling it off. The heater temperature gauge didn't show (it was badly designed) that the heater had in fact got so hot that it had melted electrical insulation on a fan in the oxygen tank. All of this was pre-flight.

56 hours into the mission, the crew used the fan to stir the tank, causing sparks and the eventual explosion.

This document must be post Apollo 13. Copied verbatim from the linked PDF:

> Even the Apollo 13 oxygen tank rupture, by far the most critical problem of any Apollo mission to date, was overcome by relying on preplanned emergency procedures and the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the astronauts and the ground support team.

I so wish that your username had been "Pluto" when you asked that question. Snarkiness put aside, I searched around online to see if maybe I was missing something. It looks like it was simply a misuse of the word. I would have suggested using "celestial body" or even "world" in place of "planet". Perhaps he was using it in the colloquial sense (in the same way a tomato is a "vegetable").

This question struck me. I, too, googled it, and came up empty handed. I then asked on Quora, which at the time of this comment, has 5 not-unreasonable answers.

My favorite answer is Joshua Engel's:

> It’s just a turn of phrase. He’s evoking the idea of “planet” as “one of the lights in the sky”, something people have long dreamed of.

> It was an awkward phrase even at the time, though. George Low may have been a great administrator, but he’s a lousy writer. My red pen itched at every word. (In the very next sentence he misspells “mankind”.) He meant to be poetic, but his audience would have been confused by it, and that wouldn’t be the last time in that document.

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-NASA-refer-to-the-Moon-as-a-pl...

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/planet:

”1.2 Astrology historical

A celestial body distinguished from the fixed stars by having an apparent motion of its own (including the moon and sun), especially with reference to its supposed influence on people and events.

‘the planets are presently influencing you in a positive way’”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_planet:

”In classical antiquity, the seven classical planets are the seven non-fixed astronomical objects in the sky visible to the naked eye: Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mercury, the Sun, and the Moon. The word planet comes from two related Greek words, πλάνης planēs (whence πλάνητες ἀστέρες planētes asteres "wandering stars, planets") and πλανήτης planētēs, both with the original meaning of "wanderer", expressing the fact that these objects move across the celestial sphere relative to the fixed stars.”