Marvel at the MoonSample

Inventing Math

In the 1960s, NASA knew what they wanted to do: launch astronauts into space, land them on the Moon, and get them safely home again. Figuring out how to do that meant solving a whole bunch of math problems. These weren’t regular 2 + 2 math problems either. That’s because the Earth and Moon are always moving. So you can’t aim for where the Moon is right now; you have to aim for where it’s going to be. It’s like tossing a peach twenty-eight feet in the air and trying to hit just the fuzz with a dart. If you hit the skin, that’s a crash landing.

To avoid that crash, NASA needed to invent new ways to solve these new problems. They needed to invent math. (Which is just kind of mind-blowing, right?)

Here’s the cool part. Before NASA started asking how to get a man on the Moon, Stanley Schmidt was already working to find the answers. Later, he teamed up with Rudolf Kálmán and developed the Schmidt-Kalman filter. Basically, it made all that complicated new math simple enough for 1960s computers to handle. Their work was a huge part of getting a rocket to the Moon.

NASA figured out some math here and there, but God knows it all! And He can use math to fix some big problems, like when Jesus multiplied a kid’s lunch to feed more than five thousand people (John 6). God’s control of math—and all things—means He’s able to take care of you, no matter what problems come your way. So when you need a new way to solve a problem, trust that God is already working on the answers for you.

God, I can count on You to know all the right answers—and to help me find them too. Amen.