A smartphone made in 2012 "is 1,500 times more powerful than Apollo XI computers"

Fifty years after the arrival of man on the moon, the specialists recalled the sights of this feat. The letters "one by one" from Neil Armstrong's office answered those who did not believe in moon landing or the iPhone 5 1,500 times. more powerful than some Apollo XI computers.

This event, set in a socio-political context that the two superpowers of the time (the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) faced, aroused endless emotion among the witnesses of this event. history of July 20, 1969.

So Neil Armstrong answered "one by one all the letters sent to the astronaut not believing in the landing," said Telam the aerospace engineering doctor Livio Gratton, dean of the Colomb Institute (Cona -Unsam).

"In the end, it was a standard letter in which all the tests were very nicely explained," he added.

Some 650 million people saw Armstrong TV on the surface of the moon, the result of a gigantic mission involving 400,000 workers.

As for technologies, one could summarize that "today, an iPhone 5 is 1,500 times more powerful than any Apollo 11 computer," Gratton said.

However, he stressed that, despite this technical distance, the concept of "management", coordination and teamwork had made a major contribution from a technological point of view, added the specialist, quoting James Webb, as saying. a director of NASA

For many Apollo, was born the "true concept of the engineering of the systems, it is thus that any complex system is built today", Gratton stressed.

"What has always caught my eye is the great spatial development that took place in just 12 years, from the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 to the arrival of man on the moon in 1969, "he told Telam Diego Córdova, amateur journalist. aerospace issues that recently published the book "Footprints on the Moon".

Cordova said that "the electronics were just beginning and that we knew nothing about space navigation, let alone how to send a human being in space and bring it back safely."

However, "because of Soviet achievements in space, such as the first satellite, sending the first living being on the Earth orbit (Laika, the dog) and the first human being (Yuri Gagarin) made President John Kennedy understand that the priority was to put a man on the moon to defeat the Soviets in this fight, "he said.

"The big secret and, in my humble opinion, the difference that allowed the United States to reach the Moon and not the Soviet Union, is the existence of NASA, the oldest space agency in the world to have officiated as a great director, "he summed up.

Although the work to be done was considerable, the face of the mission was that of the three astronauts: Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins, who had traveled to different countries of the world, including Argentina. his imprint on the moon.

The mission was a success but the attempts failed: "Armstrong had a famous accident with the vehicle simulator on Earth," Gratton said.

With this simulator, which recreated the lunar conditions, there were three accidents in total and one of them was an explosion.

"The scientific legacy that Apolo leaves us 50 years after the moon landing is very interesting because what we know of the moon comes largely from the inhabited Apollo missions, with their kilos of rocks brought in during their six landings, and scientific instruments of measurement that went to the moon and continued to work long after the end of these missions, "said Cordova.