> The feats accomplished over half a century ago with the very limited resources...

KineticLensman · on July 13, 2023

> Absolutely no excuse why we haven't done it since then

Well there is the fact that Apollo had (at its peak) something like 400,000 people working on it and involved a spend of $164bn (in 2021 dollars) [0]. I think we could get back to the moon if we had that sort of commitment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Costs

booleandilemma · on July 13, 2023

Just imagine what we could accomplish if we were able to mobilize a massive number of people in this age.

A 21st century equivalent of the pyramids or the great wall of China.

What will our descendants look at and say "I can't believe they built this 2000 years ago!"?

blastro · on July 13, 2023

apple silicon? ;)

joezydeco · on July 13, 2023

We had two highly trained wetware intelligence systems on board Apollo to land that thing successfully.

If Apollo 11 was unmanned and that 1202 alarm came up? It probably would have aborted or crashed.

tabtab · on July 13, 2023

It may have landed at a steep angle on a boulder, like Viking 1 did. Fortunately, Viking 1 still worked.