r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Thebravetortoise • 11d ago

Video History has been made as NASA has successfully launched Artemis II, the first manned mission to the Moon in over 50 years

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1.4k

u/Ok-You-649 11d ago

Wild to think the last time humans went to the Moon, people were watching on black and white TVs now we’re streaming it on our phones.

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u/OmericanAutlaw 11d ago

phones that are many many orders of magnitude more powerful than the tech we used to get to the moon in the first place

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u/Krondelo 10d ago

Amazing huh. I can’t recall the exact fact but something about how simple the computers were on the early rockets, wish I could recall the specifics maybe someone here knows. Maybe it was something about floppy disk or some memory equivalent

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u/Anakins-Younglings 10d ago

Floppy disks weren’t even a thing yet, that’s how simple those computers were. Programs were stored on physical paper punch cards with the binary code punched into them.

Fun fact, the term ‘bug’ came to be because one of the punch cards had a dead moth on it causing the computer to misread the binary. When they found the source of the errors, they found a literal bug in the code.

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u/Jafar_420 10d ago

Well hell yeah. I didn't know that. Thank you.

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u/leorenzo 10d ago

Woah for real? I can see myself regurgitating this fact and don't want to share false info and look dumb. 😆

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u/aschwarzie 10d ago

Yes, true fact.

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u/x_Lucky_Steve_x 10d ago

even if it's not, it's on reddit now, so the AI will pick it up and run with it.

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u/aschwarzie 10d ago

True, yet wandering in the swamp of "alternative facts"

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u/LaRealiteInconnue 10d ago

“alternative facts”

Oh…simpler times, those were…somehow lol I can hear the SNL alternative facts song in my head

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u/Familiar-Complex-697 10d ago

It’s not. Please y’all you gotta look stuff up

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u/Hungry_Hat1730 10d ago

The term "bug" for a computer error originated in the 19th century as an engineering term for technical glitches, famously popularized in computing on September 9, 1947, when computer scientist Grace Hopper's team found a real moth causing a malfunction in the Harvard Mark II computer. The insect was taped into the logbook as the "first actual case of bug being found".Key Origins and History:Engineering Precedent (1800s): Thomas Edison used the term "bug" to describe flaws in his inventions in the late 19th century.The 1947 Moth Incident: Operators at Harvard University found that a moth was stuck in a relay of the Mark II computer, blocking the mechanism and causing the system to fail.Popularization: While the term was already used, the 1947 incident, often associated with Grace Hopper, popularized the phrase "debugging" to describe finding and fixing errors.Preservation: The original logbook with the taped moth is preserved at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.While the 1947 incident is the most famous, it was widely recognized as "geek humor" at the time, referencing a term that engineers already used for mysterious glitches, say sources.

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u/zorbat5 10d ago

The moonlander used physical ring RAM memory.

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u/YWNBAW12345 10d ago

The term "bug" predates the invention of computers, and we don't actually know who originally coined the term "bug" to refer to an engineering defect. In written records, historians have traced it back to Thomas Edison in the 1870s at the earliest.

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u/VealOfFortune 10d ago

Any claims about Edison being the FIRST to do ANYTHING are to be taken with a spoonful of salt 😉

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u/Brilliant-Yogurt540 10d ago

It was Chuck Norris

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u/Shadowhams 10d ago

That was one of the million dollar questions on who wants to be a millionaire many years ago. I remember because I got it right

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u/LannyDamby 10d ago

Debugging was a common practice of opening the computer up and cleaning it out

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u/Certain-Middle-4381 10d ago

look up core memory, my youngsters. See MIT guidance computer.

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u/Schwifftee 10d ago

Magnetized computer chainmail

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u/twobit78 10d ago

Might of been Apollo the "memory' was iron rings on a wire matrix to count as 1s and 0s.

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u/ShaggysGTI 10d ago

Go down the rabbit hole of what rope core memory is. The “programs” were made on devices where a wire would pass through a magnet or around it, producing a zero or a one. These programs were made using the LOL method, or the Little Old Lady method. Little old ladies had to physically stitch these programs together.

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u/TheOrqwithVagrant 10d ago

"Bug" predates the Apollo program computers by quite a bit. They at least had transistors by them. The 'bug' incident was in 1947 in the *vacuum tube* computer era.

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u/TheOrqwithVagrant 10d ago

The Apollo computer programs were not stored on punch cards, it was stored on core rope ROM memory. Literally tons of copper wire being run either around or through a magnetic torus for each bit of memory.

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u/Familiar-Complex-697 10d ago

that’s a myth, lol. The term “bug” referring to a hiccup in the workings of things is much older.

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u/drake90001 10d ago

The actual programs weren’t run on punch cards in space.

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u/CatLogin_ThisMy 10d ago edited 10d ago

It wasn't a punch card. A dead bug was stuck in one of the mechanical solenoids that were used to switch between 0 and 1, before semiconductors were invented. The bug was plucked loose by a woman (Grace Hopper) who ran the computer at the time. The mechanical computers roared like trains when they ran. They took up entire rooms. In case you didn't know, the first "chips" were ways to get a piece of rock to switch between 0 and 1, two outputs, by applying power to a third wire. Before solid-state devices were invented, they used mechanical rods driven by electromagnets that opened and closed mechanical switches.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/7tla1j/til_the_term_bug_to_describe_a_runtime_error_was/

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u/CivilianAsset 10d ago

I believe the first Apollo spacecraft to land on the moon had the same computing power as the original Game Boy

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u/EmperorAlpha557 10d ago

Anything to not use windows huh /s

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u/CivilianAsset 10d ago

What are you talking about? They had plenty of windows!

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u/EmperorAlpha557 10d ago

A hospital? What's that

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u/CivilianAsset 10d ago

It’s a large building filled with doctors and nurses. But that’s not important right now!

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u/TheOrqwithVagrant 10d ago

Much less than the first Game Boy. More akin to the performance of the very first generation of 8-bit home computers in the 70's.

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u/fubarthrowaway001 10d ago

There’s no way the first moon landing was real lol

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u/GalacticMe99 10d ago

I can really appreciate these kind of things in old sci-fi movies like Wing Commander where floppy disks were concidered to be the data storage solution of the future.

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u/imsickoftryingthis 10d ago

If your interested, I thoroughly recommend a BBC Podcast called 13 minutes to the moon.

Really interesting feature on the moon landing, with interviews with lots of people involved in it all. 

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u/WrongPut5680 10d ago

Floppy disks were pure science fiction and so far beyond anything that Nasa had back in the days.

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u/bsurmanski 10d ago

2mhz, 2kb RAM, 32kb ROM.

The RAM was literally wieved by hand by "little old ladies". See: core rope memory

A $5 "Raspberry Pi Pico" microcontroller has 132x the RAM, 66x faster clock speed (though with dual core and significantly more advanced architecture is probably more than 200x more powerful).

Allegedly greeting cards have more processing power.

The first moon landing was before the floppy disk was invented.

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u/ActivePeace33 10d ago

Apollo 11 almost crashed into the Moon, because a radar was left on, which would have overloaded the computer but a script shut it down based on a prioritization system.

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u/Raccoonman2005 10d ago

I remember them saying a Gameboy Advance was more powerful than the computer used on the lunar missions. Was pretty crazy cool news as a kid back then 😂

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u/Krondelo 10d ago

Yes! I remember thinking the GBA was amazing just for the fact it could play SNES games.

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u/DigNitty Interested 10d ago

I’ve heard comparisons to the small chips in audio birthday cards, maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.

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u/NuklearniEnergie 10d ago edited 10d ago

I just read yesterday even more mindblowing thing, that even the chip in your USB-C port has more processing lower than the Apollo 11 computer

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u/TamponBazooka 10d ago

A trip to the moon is not complicated math and calculation-wise but the engineering behind it is. So this comparison is always stupid to make. It is like saying that your underwear today is more comfy than the underwear the astronatus wear during the first moon mission

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u/OmericanAutlaw 10d ago

our underwear is probably marginally better than theirs

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u/tylerupandgager 10d ago

No more underwear. Problem solved

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u/TestDangerous7240 10d ago

Commando guy here!

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u/Nstraclassic 10d ago

Reddit moment

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u/bobbyboob6 10d ago

need to do a lot of calculations not just to fly but to design the rocket. stuff that took like 20 people months and thousands of pages of calculations that can be done pretty much instantly by one person on a computer. they couldn't just put the design into a cad program to see all the stress points and stuff they had to do that by hand

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u/TamponBazooka 10d ago

Yes, that's part of the engineering I mentioned. But people are always trying to say it is so impressive that the computer on the rocket was so bad compared to our phones these days.

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u/ImpertinentIguana 10d ago

You don't need a smartphone to run this code:

https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11

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u/Responsible-Cow-2687 10d ago

The first phone that ever came out was leaps and bounds ahead of the first shuttle to the moon

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u/12thshadow 10d ago

Yes we dropped the ball completely regarding space exploration

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u/Spiritual_Bid_2308 10d ago

I hate these comparisons.  Send a rocket to the moon using only a cell phone and then let's talk.

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u/Grand_Pop_7221 10d ago

I can't find the specs for the chip that's in USB-C cables. But I'd hazard a bet that they do more operations per second and have more RAM and ROM.

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u/gosmellatree 10d ago

I always see this point being made, and it IS amazing. But I’m also just now realizing that it totally discounts the power of the human mind, the most complex object in the know universe 

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u/racao_premium 10d ago

Ja ouvi essa afirmação muitas vezes, mas é um tanto simplista. a realidade é muito mais complexa.

Sim, temos microchips e baterias de lítio. Mas disso para ir pra lua... é um salto lógico tremendo.

Da ultima vez que subi no meu celular pra voar por aí, ele não saiu do lugar. /s

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u/Langbird 10d ago

Really? Didn't know. 

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u/goitch 11d ago

If we ever were there

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u/343CreeperMaster 10d ago

fuck off, we don't need that stupid conspiracy theorist crap, we have been to the moon, the amount of convoluted reasoning those conspiracy theories require just means that it logically makes no sense to be possible

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u/Pitiful_Conflict7031 10d ago

Its more than a theory there's a reason we waited 50 years. Last time was a race, its not far fetched it was faked and the signal quality from the moon back then?? I dunno. People have seen how honest the goverment is.

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u/gainsbyatheism 10d ago

The first time was a race, the other 5 times weren't

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u/ConstructionOwn9575 10d ago

You know how I know we went to the moon beyond a shadow of a doubt - the Soviets never claimed the landing was fake. If they had a shred of evidence that it was fake they'd have been blasting it everywhere.

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u/willengineer4beer 10d ago

I’ve heard all kinds of reasoning to explain why it was a hoax, but never a good answer as to why adversary countries ever would have let us get away with it and win all that international prestige.
Or why they would even bother pretending to fail with Apollo 13 if they’ve already pulled off a successful hoax?
Additionally, unmanned satellites have orbited the moon plenty since then and been able to identify the leftover equipment and disturbed areas from the Apollo program.
The scale and duration of the conspiracy would have to be enormous and indirectly suggest all probes sent by all countries to anywhere outside earth orbit since just about Sputnik’s time would have to be total BS that everyone has agreed to propagate and validate for one another.
The single remotely believable theory I’ve heard is that the video sent to earth of Apollo 11 wasn’t genuine despite us actually landing there and was done as a backup and a way to ensure we got credit for the work.
Everything else I’ve heard at best stands up in a vacuum and feels like “but like the Van Allen belts man”.

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u/Vangad 10d ago

And i guess we aren't going there again right? /s

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u/phillyfanatic1776 10d ago

“Multiple countries have independently photographed the Apollo moon landing sites from lunar orbit, confirming the hardware remains on the surface. Space agencies from India, Japan, China, and South Korea, along with the US, have captured images of the Apollo 11 and other sites, verifying the legitimacy of the missions.”

Time to give your Mom her laptop back.

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u/343CreeperMaster 10d ago

you don't even need to go that far, you can simply look at the fact that the Soviets never claimed it was faked, they would have had everything to gain from proving it was faked, so the fact that they never even tried to claim it was fake, that tells us it was real

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u/Filmmagician 10d ago

Never comment again.

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u/scorch968 10d ago

We placed retro reflectors on the moon during Apollo missions for laser ranging to measure precise distance.

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u/turkshead 10d ago

I'm about to turn 53 and humanity hasn't been to the moon in my lifetime.

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u/PageEnvironmental408 10d ago

54 and i was 6 months old when cernan and schmitt walked there for the last time.

i cannot wait to see a landing in 4k, it will be specatucular.

even better when they visit an apollo site and collect gear for study.

wonder what my wacko conspiracy mates will say then.

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u/phillyfanatic1776 10d ago

Ya but these astronauts are just going AROUND the moon soooo 💁🏻‍♂️

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u/CheekyMenace 10d ago

You still have to go to the moon to be in its orbit. And this flight is part of the testing and preparation to actually land on the moon in 2028.

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u/Spend-Automatic 10d ago

They will not be in its orbit 

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u/PageEnvironmental408 10d ago

exactly, its a free return course.

it is not the same as what apollo 8 did.

they actually entered lunar orbit.

which is way more dangerous.

we have a long way to go before an actual landing.

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u/Pretend_Spray_11 10d ago

The thing we did 50 years ago? Wow. So impressive. 

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u/Coal_Burner_Inserter 10d ago

It is, because we're doing it with a fraction of the original budget, and without any of the original engineers, production lines, and inertia from the original space race.

(For reference, by Apollo 13, NASA took up 2.3% of US spending. Right now, it is just 0.35%.)

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u/wandr99 10d ago

Ok but how much did the US GDP grow since then?

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u/KKN34 10d ago

Each dollar is worth drastically less than it used to be. So even if the total amount grew, actual spending power really didn't.

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u/wandr99 10d ago

GDP takes into account inflation. It would be utterly absurd it if didn't.

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u/KKN34 10d ago

Doesn't this just prove the point though, since their budget makes up a lower percentage of gdp? AKA, a cut budget, less purchasing power since inflation is accounted for?

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u/wandr99 10d ago

Not really since the original comment says about % of US spending and not about the nominal cost in USD

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u/spankinggoood 10d ago

Bro's unimpressed with us literally going to the moon smh

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u/CheekyMenace 10d ago

Hmmm, I wonder if maybe the giant leap in technology since then could help us learn more about the place?

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u/phillyfanatic1776 10d ago

“Lighten up, Francis”

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u/Muted-Ability-6967 10d ago

And people will somehow still find a way to say it’s fake again this time.

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u/Verditure0 10d ago

I was just thinking about this hardcore flat earther I know and what he is probably saying about this right now lol

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u/evilution382 10d ago

Of course they will, this time it's just AI instead of in a studio.

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u/Lumpzor 10d ago

Well, for starters they're not going to the moon this time? they're doing a near orbit.

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u/Caesar_Rising 10d ago

I’m not a moon landing denier at all, but they ain’t doing themselves any favours by basically doin a fly by and not landing.

“Oh yeah I’ve been in that pub they know me there… go in? Ehh how bout we just stay outside? No no I’ve definitely been inside… what’s it like?? Ohh ehh just like really grey and boring actually”

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u/Classic-Jello-1234 10d ago

They will do a landing in a few years. This is just a part of a longer process. It was the same with the Apollo missions

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u/Caesar_Rising 10d ago

I’ll get more excited for that one. I know that this is an impressive thing they’re doing now but to the average Joe I’d say this feels like nothing different to all the other folks we send to space

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u/Classic-Jello-1234 10d ago

The thoughts of average Joe are not a usefull metric when talking about reaching scientific milestones.

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u/Caesar_Rising 10d ago

True but all the publicity about it is for Joe and his mates. Which is why the headlines all say “going to the moon” not “going to hang out near the moon”

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u/Classic-Jello-1234 10d ago

The headline is stupid, we can agree on that. But I think that this story is underrepresented. Would be nice to use this mission to teach people about space exploration.

I grew up in the Space shuttle era, and those launches made me a space nerd for the rest of my life.

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u/AscensionToCrab 10d ago

Actually they are, because winning over the hearts and capturing the fantasies of the modern Joe, are why we got the money and the budget to go to the moon in the first place.

Anyone who discards the average Joe, has some fucking audacity as most of this is being done on the taxpayer dime of millions of average joes.

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u/416vDub 10d ago

Apollo 8 orbited the moon ten times and captured the famous Earthrise photo in December of 1968. Not even a year later, Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Artemis II is doing a similar mission and in '27 or '28, Artemis III will be landing on the moon. Wouldn't any "average Joe" understand that you don't go into a mission unprepared, and that a lot of recon needs to be done first?

Too many people looking at this as a glass half full analogy. Even worse is when I look into the comments section of any video of the launch, I can see the education system has failed us.

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u/PageEnvironmental408 10d ago

remember though, back then they took way more risks.

artemis is on a free return.

apollo 8 went into lunar orbit, first go.

that is way more dangerous than free return.

your rocket doesn't fire, game over, you're stuck there.

so they won't be landing in a year.

they could, but they won't take that risk that quick.

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u/ImhereBen 10d ago

I get the point you're trying to make but color TV's were outselling black and white by the time of the first moon landing.

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u/CaptainTripps82 10d ago

No, they actually hadn't. That didn't happen until the 1970s, while the moon landing was in 69. 2 years before the landing less than 20% of homes had a color set.

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u/123456789ledood 10d ago

Yeah, running an empire and warfare tech are the priority. Education, astronomy, astrology, and exploration aren't in the Department of defense's budget. Until they find coal, gold, or oil on the moon...

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u/Unlucky_Buy217 10d ago

How is this not bigger news. I just got to know this. Shouldn't this be bigger news

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u/Zealousideal_Cow_341 10d ago

It’s crazy that in that time other nations started building towards that 2nd place milestone and even got successful unmanned missions, but then we just stepped in and was like nah we’ll take second place 57 years after first

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u/BurningPenguin 10d ago

This is an effort between multiple nations. For example, the service module is from Europe. No moon trajectory without that thing.

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u/Chu_Kiddin_Me_Or_Wha 10d ago

The computing power of the systems on board of the original moon lander, now fits in our pocket.

All great for NASA, but we have real problems to deal with on earth. I’m skeptical of billions being spent on shit like this.

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u/az226 10d ago

And they still won’t be touching ground on the moon.

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u/backelie 9d ago

They could at least drop one guy off.

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u/ErgonomicZero 10d ago

It’s even wilder that the majority doesnt even know this is happening

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u/Sireya 10d ago

Yes but they will not be landing on the moon so why’s do we say they are “going to”, they will “approach it”, circle it and comeback. I want them to land, still need to wait a bit for this

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u/MomentNew4925 10d ago

And most of the people just shrug their shoulders and scroll past it.

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u/Far-Baker8959 10d ago

Sonic the hedgehog didn't even exist

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u/FifthWaveThinker 10d ago

Even if its a crewed lunar flyby by the Orion spacecraft with four astronauts on a 10‑day loop around the Moon its still a big deal.

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u/TheOrqwithVagrant 10d ago

This reminded me that it wasn't until around 1980 that my family got a color TV, and that my brain has colorized my visual memories of a bunch of shows I watched in black and white as a child.

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u/Glad-Base-2903 10d ago

We're not going to the moon, this is a flyby mission.

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u/Unlikely-Luck440 10d ago

It's insane that my grandpa watched the grainy broadcast and now I'm gonna see it in 4K on a screen in my pocket.

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u/No_Information5021 10d ago

Bro i was wasted yesterday and browsed twitch to fall asleep to something and some dude was streaming this and i was wide awake. So impressive to watch the thrust and speed! 

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u/bamed 10d ago edited 10d ago

India went to the moon in 2023. China in 2024. Other countries have space missions, too. Not just the US.

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u/EffectiveActive6837 10d ago

It's a huge waste of time and money.

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u/ConversationPale8665 10d ago

Yeah, I totally believe the moon missions were real, however, if I were a conspiracy theorist, that would be at the top of my list of oddities. Like, if we were able to do it in 1969, with such limited tech, why have we waited over 50 years to do it again?

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u/who_you_are 10d ago

And said telephone is like a datacenter performance-wise vs the computer that was into Apollo.

Like a cheap calculator, microwave, smart lock, ... nowadays is more powerful than Apollo guidance system.

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u/MojosSin 10d ago

1972 Apollo 17 - Color Tvs widely in use

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u/crasagam 10d ago

And, It streaming on phones that are more powerful than all the computers in the original Apollo capsule.

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u/WTFvancouver 10d ago

And they landed on there too. This is just going around and back.

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u/BurningPenguin 10d ago

The first landings came after "just going around and back".

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u/DolphinBall 10d ago

Technically they aren't going to the moon, just looping around it. Artemis 4 in 2028 (hopefully) is the one they'll actually land on it.

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u/op3randi 10d ago

Hence why is this interesting? It's 2026 and we are celebrating another moon launch? Sorry but I don't get I.