Monday was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. The story of the Apollo program is an historic and inspirational one, but it’s also relevant to software development.

To understand the significance of the Apollo program from an engineering standpoint, we must begin at the beginning…
Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee were killed on the launch pad when the Apollo 1 capsule burst into flames just prior to the launch test. What happened? Well, according to Wikipedia (I know, far from an unimpeachable source, but bear with me here):

“Although the ignition source of the fire was never conclusively identified, the astronauts’ deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal design hazards in the early Apollo command module. Among these were the use of a high-pressure 100 percent-oxygen atmosphere for the test, wiring and plumbing flaws, flammable materials in the cockpit (such as Velcro), an inward-opening hatch that would not open in this kind of an emergency and the flight suits worn by the astronauts.”

In short, no one knows for sure what specifically caused the fire, but everyone agrees that some fundamental errors led to the conditions (whatever they ultimately were).

what really went wrong was at the planning and design stage. NASA was in such a rush to make up lost time in the space race with the USSR, that they got cocky after early successes, cut corners and went full bore toward a fully manned, Apollo capsule before they were really ready.

The precursor missions to Apollo were the Mercury and Gemini projects. These projects had highly specific mission statements and each was directed toward a discrete piece of the overall lunar landing mission. Project Mercury was directed toward getting a man into space, and back again. The goal of project Gemini was to perform extra-vehicular activity (pre-cursor to space walk), and docking maneuvers.

NASA began the mission to the moon with an iterative approach, but switch to a more waterfall like approach where they tried to construct a whole new capsule module from scratch, with the intent of landing on the moon and returning. They used the knowledge gained from the earlier Mercury and Gemini projects, but constructed new - and untested - equipment for Apollo.

The parallel to software development is using an iterative approach to develop phase I of a project, only to throw it away and start over on phase II. The whole purpose of the iterative approach is to focus on small, achievable parts of a greater whole to maintain momentum but also to limit what must be tested and hence limit (theoretically) the universe of possible bugs.

I think the 2 most important software development lessons we can learn from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions are:

1. To be successful, have clear and concise mission objectives (goals).
2. Start small, and build on each success.

This is what made the Gemini and Mercury missions so successful, and ultimately made Apollo 11 possible and it will drastically improve the odds of your next software project being a success as well.

• Window.scrollTo Fails Under OVERFLOW-Y: auto Style. I was trying to subclass a Web Treeview control for my own evil purposes and ran into a sticky problem - scrollTo not working! Just for background, my evil purpose...
• How to find what's running under SVCHost.exe My PC was behaving sluggishly the other day. I tried to be patient, but had to fire up the task manager when I could bear it no longer. That's when...
• Free Antivirus Recommendations (Protect Yourself Online With Free AntiVirus Software). I got tired of shelling out $40+ a year for antivirus protection long ago. Aside form the price, what really bugged me was the bloat! It became more and more...
• How to Delete Empty Folders - FREE! While performing a disk cleanup recently, I had cause to locate and delete any empty folders under a root folder. I knew there had to be a batch file command...
• Are Free Antivirus and Firewall Products Really Any Good? There was a time in my life when I used security and protection suites like Norton and McAfee, but after a while I grew unsatisfied with them. "But Norton and...

• The Correct Project: Start, Developing, End. Main principles of making short projects. As an example of short projects on working out of software it is possible to result site working out, small information systems for own needs, the first versions of programs for external consumers, working out of shareware and so on. Such short project usually......
• Rookie and Beginner Woodwork Projects Just like with many other types of jobs, when it comes to woodwork projects, planning is of the utmost level of importance. Cutting wood and working with wood is always going to demand that you utilize careful planning and a step by step approach toward reaching the ultimate goal for......
• cpa marketing illinois [mage lang="" source="flickr"]cpa marketing illinois[/mage] A Short History of Systems Development"If they do not have an appreciation of whence we came, I doubt they will have an appreciation of where we should be going." - Bryce's Law INTRODUCTION I always find it amusing when I tell a young person in......
• Popular Personal Productivity Software Cartoon August 2006 I virtually took a small group to a tropical island in Thailand. I was committing myself to a 30 day Time Management Training month. 33 personal productivity software programs were put through their paces. And this cartoon by the living legend Mark Joyner sums up what I found......
• SkyGolf SkyCaddie SG3.5 GPS Rangefinder User Reviews Send this to a friend SkyGolf SkyCaddie SG3.5 GPS Rangefinder Manufacturer: SkyGolf GPS Customer Rating: List Price: $329.95 Sale Price: $209.99 Availibility: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Now Product Description SkyGolf SG3.5 GPS The SG3.5 is fully-featured and has a large screen that displays distances......