MOON: 1110011

MOON is an educational game where players will simulate a simple computer.

Help the astronauts of the Eagle lunar module to fulfill their mission while you learn how to count in binary, perform logical operations, and find out how a computer works… while also having fun!

Note

MOON is recommended for 10-year-olds and older, for 1 to 4 players and an estimated duration of 15-45 minutes (depending on the selected difficulty).

In 1969, millions of people around the Earth gathered around their television sets to witness an event that was happening 384,000 km away. The Eagle lunar landing was on its way to land on the moon, and it relied on the non-stop calculations of its on-board computer, which accomplished this with less computing power than a modern digital watch.

However, three minutes before landing, the computer triggered several alarms: a radar that should have been switched off during the landing procedure unexpectedly switched on. The on-board computer, which needed to devote its scarce computing resources to landing the lunar module, could easily become overwhelmed by this extra work.

Fortunately, the software that managed the on-board computer, designed by a team of engineers led by Margaret Hamilton, was smart enough to detect the problem. The computer alerted the astronauts, effectively saying “I am overloaded with more tasks than I should be doing right now, so I’m going to focus only on the important tasks, those that have to do with landing.” Without this novel and intelligent design, we may have never taken that “small step for man and giant leap for mankind”.

It took more than 30 years before NASA recognized Margaret Hamilton’s accomplishments. Hamilton was the director of MIT’s Software Engineering Division, charged with developing the on-board software for the entire Apollo program: the only piece of software that has allowed humanity to set foot on other worlds.