As NASA and astronauts return their focus to landing on the Moon by early 2028 as part of the Artemis program, people are once again showing their appreciation for what NASA accomplished by successfully landing on the Moon in 1969. The technology used by the Apollo 11 spacecraft in 1969 was cutting edge in the way NASA engineers combined multiple components to work together. However, compared to today’s consumer technology equipment, Apollo 11 operated at a distinct disadvantage in speed and power.
Even though the space race of the 1960s influenced the development of today’s technology, almost all modern technology products offer significantly more processing power and computer memory than was available in the entire Apollo 11 spacecraft. Some of today’s gadgets offering more power than the Apollo 11 astronauts had include digital calculators, smart light bulbs, automobile infotainment systems, smartphones, and smart watches. (Some modern musical greeting cards may even have more processing power.)
When talking about the computing power of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, people refer to the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). It generated navigation calculations in real time, creating these calculations more accurately and much faster than human astronauts could do. NASA had more powerful ground computing systems in its Mission Control Center (MCC), but the lag of a few seconds in radio communications was too great, meaning navigation calculations had to be done on board. The need to limit the AGC’s weight for a successful takeoff also limited the hardware it could hold.
The graphing calculator you had at school was much more powerful
During high school math classes and introductory college classes, you may have used a Texas Instruments TI-84 graphing calculator. This is a popular model to help students perform various calculations during tests. While many classrooms ban the use of the Internet and smartphones during testing, students continue to use the TI-84 today, despite complaints about its cost. Since the TI-84 first went on sale in 2004, its basic hardware components and specifications have remained the same. Nonetheless, its processing power is significantly greater than that of the AGC Apollo 11, as some estimates indicate that the TI-84’s processing speed is approximately 350 times faster than the AGC could handle.
The Apollo 11 computer had the equivalent of 4 KB of RAM (which is random access memory that loses data when the computer loses power). The AGC had 72 KB of ROM (which is read-only memory that stores data permanently). The code stored in the ROM was written before the astronauts took off and they were unable to modify it. The TI-84 graphing calculator has 149 KB of RAM and 3 MB of ROM (or 3,072 KB), both significantly larger than what Apollo 11 had.
Smart bulb has faster processing speed than Apollo 11
The first smart lighting products appeared in the late 1990s, but modern designed smart LEDs appeared in the 2010s, offering remote control via a companion mobile app. Smart bulbs typically require a built-in processor to manage the signals they receive from the app and through your home’s wireless network. The processor also manages any power programs you set for automatic bulb operation, changing lighting intensity and colors, and measuring energy used.
When listing their product specifications, smart bulb manufacturers typically focus more on the lumen output, light temperature range, and available energy savings than the processing power they offer. However, Vimpo, a popular hacker, took apart a smart light bulb and used it to install a “Minecraft” game server. The DIYer, who made a YouTube video of the process, reported that the bulb has 276 KB of RAM, 128 KB of ROM and a processor running at 192 MHz. In addition to having much lower amounts of RAM and ROM than the smart bulb, the Apollo 11 AGC’s processor only ran at an equivalent speed of 0.043 MHz.
Your car’s infotainment system becomes a memory monopoly
Apollo 11’s guidance computer helped the crew travel from Earth to the Moon, a journey that covered approximately 240,000 miles. However, AGC required only a fraction of the processing power to travel that distance compared to what your modern car’s navigation and infotainment system needs to guide you the 2.4 miles it takes to reach a new neighborhood restaurant, for example.
When using your infotainment system and car stereo using an Android head unit, recommendations state that you will need at least 4 GB of RAM. This amount allows basic navigation, audio streaming or managing phone calls while driving. However, 8GB is probably the better choice if you plan to own the car for at least five years. Compare that to Apollo 11’s AGC, which had the equivalent of 4 KB of RAM, and a modern automotive infotainment system needs about a million times more RAM for the minimum recommended configuration.
Future automobiles, especially luxury models, will likely require significantly more RAM. For example, Mercedes-Benz’s MBUX platform will offer head-up displays, video and audio streaming, and other features as it combines navigation, entertainment, and connectivity. It may need 24 GB of RAM for these functions.
Smartphones are so much more powerful that they became cameras on a recent lunar mission
The iPhone is more powerful than NASA’s Apollo 11 AGC and has been since its debut nearly 20 years ago. One of the newer models, the Apple iPhone 17, has either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, depending on which version you select. This gives the iPhone 17 about 2 million or 3 million times more RAM capacity than found with the Apollo 11 guidance computer with 4 KB. (The original iPhone from 2007 had 128 MB of RAM, tens of thousands of times more than the AGC.) Apple is not sharing the operating speeds of its processors for the iPhone 17, but it is expected to be between 2.6 GHz and 4.26 GHz, significantly faster than AGC processors.
In a twist that shows how far space travel technology has evolved, crew members of the Artemis II mission that traveled around the moon and back in early 2026 carried iPhone 17 Pro Max models to take photos of the trip. Even with millions of times more RAM and processing power in these iPhones than the Apollo 11 astronauts had in their AGC, modern astronauts only needed handheld devices to serve as expensive cameras.
A small smartwatch looks like a sci-fi device next to the AGC
Wrist-sized communicators in watches have long been a staple of science fiction. From watch-sized communicators in the “Dick Tracy” comic strips of the 1940s to spy watches in the modern “Spy Kids” films, these wrist-sized communicators solve problems in a variety of science fiction situations. The Apollo 11 astronauts didn’t have these gadgets in the 1960s, but today we have devices that come close in the form of smartwatches.
The idea of modern smartwatches might have sounded like science fiction to the Apollo 11 astronauts due to their size and computing capabilities. One of the newest smartwatches, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, offers about half a million times more RAM storage than the Apollo 11 AGC (2GB vs. 4KB). Even Samsung’s first smartwatch, the 2013 Samsung Galaxy Gear, had over 125,000 times more RAM (512MB) than the AGC. The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2’s face measures just 47mm (1.85 inches) in diameter and the device weighs 61.5 grams. Meanwhile, Apollo 11’s AGC took up nearly a cubic foot of space and weighed about 70 pounds. However, no one will wear it on their wrist.
