I think it's not so much that we weren't ready for a space age tech-wise, but that the the reason we have so much of our technology today is because of investments made in the 1960s. NASA had basically unlimited money to throw at every technical challenge in the way of landing a human on the moon.
The apollo program drove the need for more computational power, more memory, better guidance and navigation and control systems, better materials, experiments to better understand many phenomena, etc. And after the apollo program ended, the contractors that developed those technologies on NASA contracts could just commercialize them. And the data from experiments, on materials, aerodynamics, combustion, and so on, that is publicly available has made engineering so much cheaper and easier.
He goes into so much detail about training to become an astronaut, his first spaceflight, training and planning for the Apollo missions, and talks about so many of the details and complexities of spaceflight that I had no idea about before.
For example, in the early space walks, they didn't consider how difficult it is to use simple tools in microgravity and without a surface to sit/stand on. The astronaut got completely exhausted just keeping himself still while turning a wrench, because when you turn the wrench, it pushes you and starts moving and spinning you, and when you try to correct it, you'll most likely overcorrect and then have to correct that, and then correct that overcorrection, etc.
And the level of planning and training for the off-nominal scenarios is crazy. They picked the top 30ish most likely failure scenarios and practiced the responses to them in simulators until they're muscle memory, and have detailed checklists for hundreds of other ones (which they also practice, just not as much). For example, when Neil and Buzz land on the moon, they'd be awake for about 10 hours, so they had to decide whether the plan was for them to open the hatch and walk on the moon right after landing, or get a night of sleep and do it "next morning". The problem with doing it immediately was that, if something went wrong, they'd have to abort and get back to the command module, but then they'd end up being awake for 20 hours while handling an emergency. On the other hand, they realized that they wouldn't be able to get sleep right after landing on the moon anyways.
His writing style is awesome: it's easy to read, explains technical details in a really easy to understand way, and quite funny.
I lucked into this in my high school library, and need to re-read it. I've read a lot of books on Apollo, this is one of the best.
FWIW, my other favorite is 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', Murray and Cox, which focuses on the engineering and management effort, and the politics, behind Apollo. Their discussion of the development of the F-1 engine in the Saturn V's first stage is amazing, among dozens of technical and managerial excellencies.
Rocket Lab and Relativity Space are also doing pretty cool work. Rocket Lab is the only other company to successfully reach orbit, they're the first to make an electric-pump fed rocket engine, and their upcoming Neutron rocket is supposed to be mostly reusable and does several things better than the Falcon 9. Relativity is using 3D printing to manufacture most of the rocket. RFA (Rocket Factory Augsburg) is also interesting, they're not doing anything novel AFAIK but they're using cheap parts from the automotive industry to bring down prices.
For the time being, there have been no need for updates. Gorhill has t updated it for like a year before he discontinued support. It's not likely to preemptively fork, but probably will once it's needed.
I used to work at an electronics store, and another reason I avoid samsung products is because, compared to everything else, they seemed to be engineered to look good for marketing material and spec sheets over actual use. They would look shiny and great and seem to have great features, but the real world UX was so annoying.
Yeah, I very much disagree with the hydraulic brakes part too.
Every bike shop employee I've talked to told me hydraulic brake maintenance is harder, but you need to do it so infrequently that they take less total effort. They feel great and have been working great for me with no work needed so far.
I used to have mechanical disc brakes and IMO they were worse than both rim and hydraulic disc brakes. They constantly needed adjustments, the cables stretched, they rubbed and made awful noises, and they weren't nearly as precise or effective as hydraulic disc brakes.
An extreme example of the consequences of #7 is the Lake Peigneur disaster, where "an engineer mistook transverse Mercator projection coordinates for UTM coordinates" and Texaco, drilling for oil, drilled into a salt mine that was under the lake. The lake drained into the mine (which had 55 workers, all survived), the canal that normally drains the lake into the ocean reversed until the mine filled up and reversed again, and the lake changed from freshwater to saltwater.
The apollo program drove the need for more computational power, more memory, better guidance and navigation and control systems, better materials, experiments to better understand many phenomena, etc. And after the apollo program ended, the contractors that developed those technologies on NASA contracts could just commercialize them. And the data from experiments, on materials, aerodynamics, combustion, and so on, that is publicly available has made engineering so much cheaper and easier.