Some Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Moon

Abstract

In the Beginning W ITH THE TYPESETTING program TEX installed in my MAC II, I begin the von Karman Lecture for the AIAA. The date is December 21, 1988, exactly 20 years to the day from the launch of Apollo 8. Eleven years earlier, the world had been enthralled by the Russian Sputnik and the Space Age had begun. I have atmy Ž ngertips several orders of magnitudemore computing power than the Apollo Guidance Computer which was carried onboard the Apollo spacecraft.And this marvel of modern technology sits on my desk at home! This is the year for celebrating Apollo 11—the 20 anniversary of the Ž rst lunar landing. But the earlier  ight of Apollo 8 was also a dramatic milestone. It was the Ž rst manned space ight beyond an earth orbit. The astronauts, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, were the Ž rst human beings ever to see the entire earth as a ball. Said Norman Cousins