The upcoming Artemis moon mission is promising to take over where the Apollo missions left off. This will begin with an unmanned mission and finally lead to a manned mission to the Moon. This will involve landing a science station on the Moon for further exploration using 21st-century technology. It is amazing what we could do with the lunar spacecraft computers in 1969. The computer had 2048 words of erasable magnetic-core memory and 36,864 words of read-only core rope memory. But with very skilled programming, this is still enough to work with. People say an iPhone is more powerful than an Apollo computer, but the programming is not there. The Apollo computers were carefully designed to do one task very well. And to withstand radiation outside the Van Allen belts. So yes, they were amazing. Some old computer parts were found in a warehouse and are being restored at the moment. We could have a working Apolla Guidance Computer (AGC) working once more after all this time. An incredible development. Imagine if such a thing had just been discarded instead of a lucky man finding them and beginning the restoration process.
It would have been a terrible shame. The wiring and design of the AGC are so complex, the rope core memory and other things are so delicate but housed in a very strong metal case that would protect it from the rigours of lift-off and landing on the Moon. A miracle that they were restored and able to power up. Someone should make an emulator of the Apollo software and make an online demo that allows people to experience the software and try out landing using an emulated computer. Something like that would be fun to play with. But going to the Moon is exciting, it would have a lot of Helium-3 and therefore could support a nuclear reactor without radioactive byproducts.
The Russian Soyuz software is available on the Internet, it can be emulated in DosBox.
Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/