Less advanced computer technology, the effect on space flights?

What sort of effects would significantly less advanced computer science have on space flights? I’m thinking this question more in a general sense, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a scenario like OTL’s space race. (Though feel free to share your ideas, if you have interesting ideas about that too!) Are there missions which would be almost impossible to do in a scenario like this or would look significantly different from their OTL counterparts? Would there be emphasis on technologies or missions which didn’t get so much attention IOTL?
 

SsgtC

Banned
Well, considering that Apollo managed to fly to the Moon and back with the computer power of a basic handheld calculator, I'm gonna say not too much of an impact.
 
I think people are missing the forest for the trees if they just look at the computers that the Apollo spacecraft actually carried. After all, most of the actual computing wasn't done in space, but on the ground, in machines at Johnson or similar places. Having less advanced computers there would certainly have an effect. Another effect would come if the computers aboard the spacecraft were built out of vacuum tubes or similar equipment instead of transistors or microchips, since vacuum tubes are much less reliable and long-lived. The reason for all the big space stations and big spacecraft with big crews in '50s predictions for space development is so that '50s era vacuum-tube computers could be operated and maintained in space, which much smaller satellites like those that ended up actually being developed weren't capable of until the development of solid-state computers. If computer technology is noticeably less advanced, those predictions might actually happen...
 

Wimble Toot

Banned
I think people are missing the forest for the trees if they just look at the computers that the Apollo spacecraft actually carried.

Yes, there was six megabytes worth of IBM System/360 Model 75s on the ground at Houston.

Well, possibly not having any sort of computer. Would that have made difference to flight operations?

I don't think you could put a man on the Moon with the astronautic equivalent of the Norden bomb sight, but putting a man in low-earth-orbit without a digital computer is probably do-able - provide you are prepared to kill the first ten men you send up on a rocket, in the hope the eleventh returns safely.

Computing safe re-entry to Earth atmosphere is the most difficult part of 50's era space exploration.
 
I don't think you could put a man on the Moon with the astronautic equivalent of the Norden bomb sight, but putting a man in low-earth-orbit without a digital computer is probably do-able - provide you are prepared to kill the first ten men you send up on a rocket, in the hope the eleventh returns safely.

Computing safe re-entry to Earth atmosphere is the most difficult part of 50's era space exploration.
You really, really wouldn't need to do that. There's a reason the United States and Soviet Union launched so many uncrewed missions before sending men up...and it's not like Mercury or Vostok had complex computers on board. That would have been perfectly doable with vacuum tubes, too.
 

SsgtC

Banned
I don't think you could put a man on the Moon with the astronautic equivalent of the Norden bomb sight, but putting a man in low-earth-orbit without a digital computer is probably do-able - provide you are prepared to kill the first ten men you send up on a rocket, in the hope the eleventh returns safely.

Computing safe re-entry to Earth atmosphere is the most difficult part of 50's era space exploration.
Apollo 13 would like a word with you. They managed soon pretty impressive navigation with no use of the computer. Now, I will grant you, reentry did requires use of the computer. But the actual navigation was managed with star sightings and a slide rule.
 
Don't forget about the hydraulic and electro-mechanical computers that were around.

You don't need electronics to do logic or computations.

A valve body in an automatic transmission is a very simple computer, more complex ones were used for '50s computing bomb sights
 

Wimble Toot

Banned
You have to ask yourself, ,why did the development of the digital computer run almost parallel with the space race?'. The SR-71 and Concorde are probably the last Western aeronautical projects designed without substantial use of digital, transistorised computers. Mercury probably the last astronautical project.
 
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