When Apollo 8 flew as a 'hail Mary' pass against the Soviet's proposed direct-lift Luna rocket to the moon that same month (which exploded on the pad and killed much of the launch facility's personnel) I was in school on the 'track' to be working in Apollo as an 'Electronics Engineer, Space Technology' from 1964 until the Space program collapsed in 1970. Our school counselors then redirected us to new fields, as for the next 10 years following that, electronics engineers were a dime-a-dozen. It taught me how to do electronics and power systems all the way down to the atomic (as in, electrons being counted, each) level, so 100% of all of my lifetime [electronic] designs have always been perfect, and I have often been hired to 'fix' those that weren't so good.
I sure wish they still taught that today! The 'kids' I am working with in the Automation Industry (since about 2000 or so) have not the foggiest idea what makes their computers or PLCs even run, outside of the software they deal with. Makes me sad.
My dad and his 15-man team worked for Eisenhower from 1954 until they were killed (13 of them) on April 21, 1958, in a mid-air collision between an F-100F and a UAL airliner (UAL736) that was NOT an accident, but was published that way because of the secrecy involved. My dad's team invented Inertial Guidance. It was first deployed in the Thor IRBM in December 1958, neutralizing the Soviet nuke threat: the day they were killed it was being added to the Atlas project. The IG team was the #1 Top-Secret project in the country, reporting only to Eisenhower directly (and my dad met with him several times) and Atlas was #2, also directly under Ike's control and no one else. Ike knew about the deep penetration into our government by the KGB and NKVD, so there was no chain-of-command on those 2 projects.
It wasn't until the Apollo's navigation system's plans were declassified in 1992 that I discovered: they used the same design as was used in the Thor(!). It was miniaturized, but it was the same mechanical system.
I have been writing a book about this whole thing since 1999 and hope to have it done soon.
