
Heinlein and Clarke discuss the Moon landings as they happen (2016) - Hooke
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/heinlein-and-clarke-discuss-the-moon-landings-as-they-happen/
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nabla9
I remember how school physics teachers face lit up when the discussion about
moon landing came up. He told that there was great speculation and differing
opinions on what would happen next (like Heinlein and Clarke do here) but
nobody thought that next 50 years would be just "Boldly going where Yuri
Gagarin has gone decades before".

Simple rule for futurology: Economies of scale + incentives >> inspiration +
technological ability.

Our smartphones match or outpace what science fiction of that time thought
possible. Internet has transformed our culture in just few decades. In space
only satellites are good business and they make just $260 billion revenue per
year. There is not enough ROI in space to justify investing significantly more
money into it.

~~~
adventured
> nobody thought that next 50 years would be just "Boldly going where Yuri
> Gagarin has gone decades before"

Pretty comically dramatic undercounting of what has been accomplished since
Yuri Gagarin.

Hubble alone embarrasses that premise. The ISS does as well. What New Horizons
recently accomplished, by itself, is enough for me to feel entirely
comfortable with what we've accomplished as a species over last 50 years
regarding space. The same goes for Curiosity on Mars.

The sole issue is the lack of understanding and appreciation for how difficult
these truly extraordinary accomplishments (of which there have been many
others I didn't list, such as Voyager or Rosetta) are compared to merely
blasting someone into an orbit around the planet.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't think anyone is undercounting what has been achieved, or
overestimating the importance of Gagarin's flight (which _was_ important as a
stepping stone).

It's that all the achievements you mentioned happened pretty much on a
shoestring budget compared to Apollo era. 'nabla9 is right about how economics
beats ability, but it's still a fucking tragedy if you think what we could
have had by today, if humanity poured a bit more money into space.

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oldandtired
As it happened. At our little country school, there was great deal of effort
to set enough televisions so we could watch the event live.

What I find amusing was seeing a video recently by a film producer/director
talking about the difficulties of that time of faking the moon landings. What
I took away from the video was that it was cheaper to send men to the moon
than it was to build all the film and storage technology to fake the moon
landings.

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8bitsrule
These 'fake' instrumends left behind continue to function.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment)

~~~
oldandtired
That has been one of my little favourite things about the whole "fake" debate
and the question that goes with it. "How were these instruments placed so
precisely on the moon, if they weren't put there by a man?"

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Sharlin
To be fair, you don’t need a manned mission to install a retroreflector. The
Soviet pre-Apollo Lunokhod landers included similar reflectors and they work
fine.

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utopcell
Valid point, but with a crucial correction: The Lunokhod landers landed on the
moon way after Apollo 11 [1] so they are in no way pre-Apollo.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_programme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_programme)

~~~
Sharlin
Oops, right! I read that the Apollo retroreflectors were improved based on
Lunokhod experiences and got confused. Presumably the text was referring to
the later Apollo 14 and 15 reflectors.

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iofiiiiiiiii
BBC Space Race (2005) is a great 4-part series about this (albeit a bit
overdramatized):

* [https://youtu.be/xcLphSY8PX0](https://youtu.be/xcLphSY8PX0)

* [https://youtu.be/kefm18yAFco](https://youtu.be/kefm18yAFco)

* [https://youtu.be/UxTf-kWbYk4](https://youtu.be/UxTf-kWbYk4)

* [https://youtu.be/wZI8uLCsjlU](https://youtu.be/wZI8uLCsjlU)

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utopcell
IMO, the best way to experience the Apollo 11 landing is on [1].

[1] [http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com](http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com)

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rzzzt
Spacelog transcripts are also very well made:
[http://apollo11.spacelog.org/](http://apollo11.spacelog.org/)

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sparkzilla
Here's a joke Arthur C. Clarke told me about the Navajo and the moon landings:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NEh8nspzXw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NEh8nspzXw)

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pp19dd
If there ever was a good time for a book recommendation, check out "The
Calculating Stars."

Probably the most impactful part of the book is the appendix, where it's made
abundantly clear how much of it was based in reality.

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pimmen
The US didn't fake the moon landings, the American politicians faked that it
was about anything but beating the USSR. They supported it and sold it as a
research project to further humankind, as dipping our toes in the cosmic
ocean.

Then, after the Russians were beat, the interest among the decision makers
cooled off.

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dh5
It was clear from the beginning it was about beating the Soviets. The fear of
the USSR achieving space superiority was very real at the time, especially
after Sputnik. JFK even said in his moon speech the US needed to establish "a
position of pre-eminence" and would do so with the landing.

