Architecting Apollo - Systems Design Lessons from the Golden Age of Spaceflight

Explore the critical systems design principles from early space exploration in this 52-minute conference talk from NDC's Copenhagen Developer's Festival. Dive into the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, examining how their software was responsible for life-or-death decisions. Analyze disasters and near-fatal accidents, such as Gemini 8 and Apollo 11, to understand the system design choices that led to or prevented catastrophes. Learn about fail-open vs. fail-closed design, recoverable software, process prioritization, levels of autonomy, and designing for human intervention. Gain valuable insights applicable to modern software development from the pioneering days of crewed spaceflight.