"Many of the things I was intrigued by had to do with how to make the mission software safe and reliable. And one of the things I remember trying very hard to do was to get permission to be able to put more error detection and recovery into the software. So that if the astronaut made a mistake, the software would come back and say "You can't do that." But we were forbidden to put that software in because it was more software to debug, to work with. So one of the things that we were really worried about is what if the astronaut made a mistake -- We were also told that the astronauts would never make any mistakes, because they were trained never to make mistakes. (Laughter)
So we were very worried that what if the astronaut, during mid-course, would select pre-launch, for example? Never would happen, they said. Never would happen. (Laughter) It happened."
She also mentions her companies:
"So since that time, the theory has evolved and now I actually lost the first company to venture capital people, and started a second company called Hamilton Technologies."
Apollo Guidance Computer History Project, Margaret Hamilton's introduction:
http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/a...
"Many of the things I was intrigued by had to do with how to make the mission software safe and reliable. And one of the things I remember trying very hard to do was to get permission to be able to put more error detection and recovery into the software. So that if the astronaut made a mistake, the software would come back and say "You can't do that." But we were forbidden to put that software in because it was more software to debug, to work with. So one of the things that we were really worried about is what if the astronaut made a mistake -- We were also told that the astronauts would never make any mistakes, because they were trained never to make mistakes. (Laughter)
So we were very worried that what if the astronaut, during mid-course, would select pre-launch, for example? Never would happen, they said. Never would happen. (Laughter) It happened."
She also mentions her companies:
"So since that time, the theory has evolved and now I actually lost the first company to venture capital people, and started a second company called Hamilton Technologies."
The link to the second:
http://www.htius.com/