I went to a talk by one of the people responsible for the Apollo guidance software (Dr. Battin from what was in the 1960s the MIT Instrumentation Lab) a few years ago. One of his stories was about how some astronauts visited Raytheon where the code was being effectively "woven" into the core memory. As he explained it, one of the purposes of the visit was to impress upon those (women) who were making the core memories that it was really important not to make a mistake because otherwise these nice young boys would die.