by Ann » Fri Jan 12, 2024 6:31 am
shaileshs wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2024 5:52 am
Tangential question (related to moon) - If NASA managed to land many astronauts on moon till 1972 (they even drove there), after 50 years, achieving same should have been piece of cake (considering that capability/expertise, instruments, technology, money - everything - we have much more/better today than what we had 50 years back) but instead, it seems a BIG struggle yet. Why ? It's as if someone is trying to reinvent the wheel. What am I missing ?
And here I had just decided that I wouldn't reply to today's APOD...
As to why it was "easy" for the United States to go to the Moon in 1969 and in the early seventies, I think it had to do with money and prestige. President Kennedy had vowed, after the successes of the Soviet space program in the fifties and early sixties, that the U.S. would send a man to the Moon and return him home safely before the decade (the 1960s) was out.
Back then, the U.S. economy was booming. It may not have been booming quite as much as it did during the fifties, but it was still very very strong (and light-months ahead of everyone else). I think I remember reading that during the sixties, after that promise made by Kennedy, one out of five federal dollars (tax dollars) went into the Apollo program. Can you imagine NASA today not only getting 20% of the entire federal budget, but getting 20% of the federal budget just to achieve a new Moon landing?
Ann
[quote=shaileshs post_id=336265 time=1705038754 user_id=143908]
Tangential question (related to moon) - If NASA managed to land many astronauts on moon till 1972 (they even drove there), after 50 years, achieving same should have been piece of cake (considering that capability/expertise, instruments, technology, money - everything - we have much more/better today than what we had 50 years back) but instead, it seems a BIG struggle yet. Why ? It's as if someone is trying to reinvent the wheel. What am I missing ?
[/quote]
And here I had just decided that I wouldn't reply to today's APOD... :wink:
As to why it was "easy" for the United States to go to the Moon in 1969 and in the early seventies, I think it had to do with money and prestige. President Kennedy had vowed, after the successes of the Soviet space program in the fifties and early sixties, that the U.S. would send a man to the Moon and return him home safely before the decade (the 1960s) was out.
Back then, the U.S. economy was booming. It may not have been booming quite as much as it did during the fifties, but it was still very very strong (and light-months ahead of everyone else). I think I remember reading that during the sixties, after that promise made by Kennedy, one out of five federal dollars (tax dollars) went into the Apollo program. Can you imagine NASA today not only getting 20% of the entire federal budget, but getting 20% of the federal budget just to achieve a new Moon landing?
Ann