The earliest crewed spaceflights, including the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, were some of the first instances of software being responsible for life-or-death decisions. While various aspects of the software and systems design could be considered outdated by modern standards, many of the core principles and design choices are directly relevant to the systems we build today.

This talk dives into several of the near-fatal accidents of early crewed spaceflight, including Gemini 8, Apollo 11, and Apollo 13, and focuses on the system design choices that averted catastrophe. Topics include failure modes, process prioritization, recoverable software, levels of autonomy, and designing for human intervention.

This talk is best-suited for a 60-minute presentation. It requires audio.