I highly recommend the book, Sunburst and Luminary;
<a href="http://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html</a><p>A technical pleasure and also very good glimpse into the Apollo team - working together, to land on the moon. It is a fun easy read, written by the fellow in charge of programming computer on the lunar lander. It is also a great snapshot of that time in history, the excitement of Apollo, and with the frustration of the Vietnam war going on, some protests, etc.
Just a hint - the main programmer, was an English major, and his use of the right words, were a key factor in the success of of creating an efficient and effective computer language.
Oh look, it's the best thing I've ever watched on youtube.<p>Okay, that might be slight hyperbole, but it's solidly in my top ten. One of those where the video documentation has no flourish, and as such doesn't get in the way of how cool the actual project is.<p>Excellent series. If anyone knows of anything even remotely similar, please send it my way.
So cool I'm going to have to go play with the PDP-11/15 in my basement to get my old hardware jones on.<p>This video of building a custom Apollo electroluminescent glass panel DSKY display is also fantastic! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2o_Sp2-aBo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2o_Sp2-aBo</a>
Interesting: he says that the famous 1202 error may sometimes crash the spacecraft and sometimes land successful in some other cases. And also that it depends on many factors. So, the sane thing to do at that moment, AIUI, was to abort the landing.<p>The Apollo 11 landing was not a tragedy be sheer luck. IIRC Armstrong asked ground control about 1202 and they tell him to ignore it. Ground controllers, probably unknowingly, bet Armstrong and Aldrin lives.