Reflected Glory

Yesterday, Sam Palmisano, IBM's CEO, was the opening keynote at the National Governors Association annual meeting. Among the usual corporate boiler plate citations of relevant corporate involvement (a rather longer and duller version of "I fell your pain") he thought it noteworthy to mention that among IBM's accomplishments was its involvement with Apollo 13; not the Apollo program, but specifically Apollo 13.

IBM has had a long association with NASA providing onboard guidance computers for the Gemini program, the guidance computer on the Saturn 1B and the and instrument unit on the Saturn 1B and Saturn V not to mention System/360s for the Houston flight control center and systems on Apollos 14, 15, 16 and 17.

I know Apollo 13 is perhaps the best known of the Apollo flights (although I remember 8 and 11 better), but citing the one mission that was almost the most spectacular disaster in NASA's history (not forgetting Apollo 1 and Challenger) doesn't seem like the best way of basking in NASA's reflected glory.