George Schmidt, Distinguished Lectures, January 16, 2020

All, Southwest Research Institute will be hosting a talk in San Antonio, (Texas, USA) by one of the engineers involved in the Apollo navigation effort, George T. Schmidt. I understand he is aware of and very interested in the Apollo Guidance Computer work done by some of the folks on this list and others, but anyone who has not had a chance to talk to him might well be interested in attending, and would certainly be welcome. The abstract and title for the talk are below, along with the URL for the IEEE distinguished lecturer website (which doesn?t say any more than I have copied below). Anyone interested in attending, let me know and I?ll forward more details as I learn them. I expect the lecture will be around noon on Jan. 16 at SwRI, with a repeat at St. Mary?s University in the evening. Inside Apollo: Heroes, Rules and Lessons Learned in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) System Development<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__nam12.s… This Abstract was written in March 2019 which is halfway between the 50th Anniversaries of Apollo 8 (Dec 1968) and Apollo 11 (July 1969). Those 2 flights were among the greatest explorations of mankind. In 8, astronauts deliberately put themselves in orbit around the moon expecting the rocket engine to later fire and bring them home to Earth. In 11, it was mankind?s first visit to the moon and Tranquility Base. Movies, books, articles, and documentaries have covered the space race. The author will give his thoughts based on 10 years inside the GNC program design, many hours in the Spacecraft Control room at Cape Kennedy monitoring GNC performance through liftoff, and then providing real-time mission support to NASA from MIT in Cambridge, MA. that abstract appears on this website: http://ieee-aess.org/education/distinguished-lecturer-and-tutorial-program#… - Mark 210-522-6025 office 210-379-4635 cell