Quark's

The quality of engineering and foresight that went into the 1970s NASA space program was unreal. It sounds made up, like a story told by a child to exaggerate the capabilities of the heroes to absurd levels. Read "Failure Is Not an Option" by Gene Krantz and "Carrying the Fire" by Michael Collins if you want sort of an overview. It was just an unreal time, and knowing some of the ingredients and motivations that made it happen are just endlessly fascinating to me.

Lightning struck one of the rockets on the way up and scrambled its electrical system. Basically like going 70 mph on the highway and then your steering wheel and brakes stop working, along with everything on your dashboard that might help you fix them. They got things back working again in seconds and continued like it hadn't happened. That is the "SCE to AUX" legend that cemented John Aaron to God-status in spaceflight history.

About 60 seconds away from the very first time landing on the moon, one of the components malfunctioned in some way that fouled up the computer so that it couldn't manage to continue flying and also do all its other tasks (accounts differ as to whether it was a hardware issue with a separate system, or a switch that Aldrin had left in the wrong position). The computer recognized that it had a problem, prioritized flying the spacecraft while notifying the astronauts that it had something it couldn't deal with, and again within a time frame measured in fractions of a minute they had come up with a workaround and put it into action and saved the landing. The workaround? Turn off the display that told the astronauts where they were, and let the people on the ground read them updates over the radio (which was having interference problems) and have the man flying just visualize it for himself to fly the spaceship.

Everyone knows the Apollo 13 story, I saw the movie, but until reading from the people involved I hadn't even really grasped how crazy it was. Think of an airplane that has a bomb go off midflight, blowing a hole in the side of the hull, and it continues the flight and lands safely at its destination even though some of its vital (vital!) machinery is missing. And the flight is a several-day flight with the crew having to balance sleeping and basic life functions against keeping the stricken airplane working until it gets where it's going. They weren't just solving a hard problem, it was just straight-up impossible.

Gordon Cooper's power failed and he computed his landing trajectory with a wristwatch and marks that he scratched on the window of his spacecraft to fix his position against the stars, while he was hypoxic and his cabin was at around 130 degrees F (54C).

Buzz Aldrin did that too, computing a docking maneuver with a sextant and scratch paper on the fly from the spacecraft when his computer failed on him. It worked, and used less fuel than any of the computer-supported maneuvers they had done that went according to plan.

They gave all the early astronauts fighter-jet trainers to use as personal vehicles. They were all pilots anyway, and it was more time-efficient for them to be able to just be wherever they needed to be without delay or coordination.

There were gods on the land in those days. They're still around, I don't know where they are working now, but they are somewhere.