Jack Garman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John R. "Jack" Garman is a computer engineer. Formerly employed by NASA, he now works for Lockheed Martin. Garman was a key figure during the Apollo 11 lunar landing, during which he dealt with a computer alarm that could have caused the mission to be aborted.
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[edit] Early life
Jack 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.
[edit] NASA career
At the age of twenty-one, Garman was hired by NASA. He chose to specialise 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 the flight controllers in Mission Control on the operation of the spacecraft computer systems. A few months before the Apollo 11 mission, he gave the simulation supervisors at Mission Control the idea of testing the reaction of flight controllers to a computer error code; GUIDO Steve Bales reacted to the simulated error by calling an abort, which turned out to be the wrong call. 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.'" This Garman did, making a list of every computer alarm code that could occur, and the correct reaction to those alarms.
This handwritten list, which he kept under the glass of his desk, proved to be invaluable during the Apollo 11 lunar landing. During the descent, the guidance computer came perilously close to overloading when a switch was set to the wrong position. "1201" and "1202" alarms, signifying an executive overflow, came up several times. Given his knowledge of the computer systems, Garman was able to advise Steve Bales that the computer could be relied upon to continue to function adequately unless the alarms came too frequently. Apollo 11 landed successfully, and Garman received an award from NASA for his role in the mission.
After the Apollo program, Garman played a key role in the development of the software for the Space Shuttle. From 1986 through 1988 he worked at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. as director of information systems services in the Space Station Program Office. Returning to Johnson Space Center in 1988, he held various senior positions in information systems, finally serving as Chief Information Officer of Johnson Space Center from 1994 through 2000.
[edit] Lockheed Martin
In 2000, Garman left NASA and became a part of the OAO Corporation. Two years later, OAO was bought by Lockheed Martin, and Garman became Lockheed Martin's technical director of NASA services, in charge of the technical support for the company's contractual activities with NASA.
