Thus generalizations cannot be made, other than that there was no conscious attempt on the part of NASA in its flight programs to improve the technology of computing. Any ways in which NASA contributed to the development of computer techniques were side effects of specific requirements. NASA uses computers on the ground and in manned and unmanned spacecraft. These three areas have quite different requirements, and the nature of the tasks assigned to them resulted in varying types of computers and software. Thus, the impact of NASA on computing differs in extent as a result of the separate requirements for each field of computer use, which is one reason why the three fields are considered in separate parts of this volume.
Computers are an integral part of all current spacecraft.
However, Mercury, the first manned spacecraft, did not carry a computer. Fifteen years of unmanned earth orbital and deep space missions were carried out without general-purpose computers on board. Yet now, the manned Shuttle and the unmanned Galileo spacecraft simply could not function without computers. In fact, both carry many computers, not just one. This transition has made it possible for current spacecraft to be more versatile.