Jack Garman
| Jack Garman | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
John Royer Garman September 11, 1944 Oak Park, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | September 20, 2016 (aged 72) near Houston, Texas, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Saving Apollo 11 mission from abort |
John Royer "Jack" Garman (September 11, 1944 – September 20, 2016) was a computer engineer, former senior NASA executive and a noted key figure of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. As a young specialist on duty during the final descent stage on 20 July 1969 he dealt with a series of computer alarms which could have caused the mission to be aborted.
Garman was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and attended the University of Michigan. He graduated in 1966 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering physics and a specialty in Computing.
In 1966, at age 21, Garman was hired by NASA. He chose to specialize in onboard computing and was assigned to the Apollo Guidance Program Section where he worked with MIT, supervising the design and testing of the Apollo Guidance Computer.
During the Apollo missions Garman worked in a support role, advising flight controllers in Mission Control on the operation of spacecraft computer systems. A few months before the Apollo 11 mission he suggested that simulation supervisors at Mission Control test how flight controllers might react to a computer error code. Guidance officer Steve Bales responded to the simulated error by calling an abort, which was found to be a needless reaction for that particular code.
As Garman later recounted, "Gene Kranz, who was the real hero of that whole episode, said, 'No, no, no. I want you all to write down every single possible computer alarm that can possibly go wrong.'" Garman made a handwritten list of every computer alarm code that could occur along with the correct reaction to each of them and put it under the plexiglass on his desk.
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