No other software system developed under NASA contract in the 1960s was as well thought out and executed as manned mission control. 'Bill' Tindall started with Mercury and Gemini ground software and later made a significant contribution to the quality of the Apollo on-board software. NASA also used successful managers from mission control work to help other programs. One became head of the personal computer division 3. Several individuals contributed to OS/360, the first multiprogramming system made commercially available by IBM 2. At each point, some experienced personnel were transferred to other parts of the company to share lessons learned. The company maintained its lock on mission control contracts through Gemini, Apollo, and the Shuttle. When asked about IBM's performance in this field, one NASA manager said without hesitation, 'IBM is the best' 1.

These things the company was able to do quite successfully, and the groups it assigned to the job impressed their NASA counterparts. When Project Vanguard and later NASA approached IBM with the requirements for computers to do telemetry monitoring, trajectory calculations, and commanding, IBM found a market for its largest computers and a vehicle for developing ways of creating software to control multiple programs executing at once, capable of accepting and handling asynchronous data, and of running reliably in real time. There are many instances of IBM support of the space program, but in no other case have the results been as directly applicable to its commercial product line. The story of computers in manned mission control is largely the story of a close and mutually beneficial partnership between NASA and IBM. Even though unmanned satellites and space probes pioneered the use of computers in mission control, the need for quick response and redundancy, the inherent complexity of manned spaceflight, and the rigors of the race to the moon forced rapid improvements and innovations in systems used in manned mission control so that they surpassed the older systems. Chapter Eight - Computers in mission control - Manned mission control computers As with manned spacecraft on-board computers, computer systems used in manned mission control are more sophisticated and larger than those used for unmanned missions. Computers in Spaceflight: The NASAExperience

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