ABSTRACT
The answer to the navigation problem is to use the principle of inertial guidance first developed by the Germans as a means of guiding Nazi missiles during the war. There were two of these units in the command module—one on the instrument panel above the command module pilot's couch and the other at the navigation station in the lower equipment bay. The lunar module, service module and command module were all provided with their own set of thrusters. During the time between separation from the command and service modules and starting the powered descent to the Moon, the crew carefully checked through the systems and ran a dummy landing through the computer. One of the functions of the computer was to control the bum activation, duration and direction of thrust. Computers of the time used core memory that relied on electromagnetic principles. A modem computer's Central Processing Unit performs calculations at a far greater rate than the Apollo computer.
