The Moon Landing's authenticity has been debated for more than 50 years, but a man who worked on developing the computer system for the lunar landing has set the record straight.
Paul Sakakeeny is a former computer scientist who worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the Sixties. One of his key jobs was overseeing NASA's operating system used during the legendary Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in 1969, known as the General Purpose Simulation System (GPSS), the UK's Daily Express reported. Sakakeeny claims a "serious bug" in the system caused a malfunction during the descent to the lunar surface, which will put an end to any outrageous claim the Moon landings were faked.
Sakakeeny told the Daily Express that: "The lab's specialized mainframe oversaw and controlled all aspects of Apollo navigation from pre-launch until mission end using a commercial IBM (International Business Machines) simulation program.
The simulation program actually created the navigation plan and downloaded it to the capsule two minutes before launch. The malfunction led to the simulator showing that the lunar lander had crashed into the Moon's surface.
Sakakeeny noted: "The simulation, when adjusted with the real flight data, attempted to land three feet into the Moon's surface, crashing the lander. A fake landing would not have produced like this."
"One could say this proves the landing was fake because the wrong data fed to the simulator containing an error and if a real landing had occurred the simulator would work. Despite the best efforts of IBM and MIT the bug was never found, until the year 2000," he explained.
Known as the Year 2000 Problem, the turn of the millennium exposed many computer errors that had occurred over the previous decade. Problems arose because many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits, making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900.
