Ruskies: The substitute for 21st century technology
SNDSOUL said:
My question is, if we could send a team to space and land on the moon with the technology present in 1969, then why is it that NASA says that we wont have the capability to land on the moon again until somewhere around 2020??
Good question. This illustrates perfectly how there is so much more to application of technology than simply having the technology:
Before Kennedy was even president, there was a strong concern that we were already lagging well behind the Soviets in missle technology. The Soviets had also beat us to putting an satellite into orbit and a man in space. Kennedy did not want to let them beat us to the moon and during the 60s our
country spent accordingly. Even though have done it before, it would cost quite a bit to put an man on the moon today. More importantly, I don’t think we have anything today that could give us the same focus and determination as we did back then.
Sending a man to the moon and back must be the greatest technological feat our race has ever achieved - It seems orders of magnitude beyond anything else in terms of complexity. During its first decade, over 15
billion man hours were spent on the Apollo program. I really have no idea how to comprehend such a figure. I suppose one could say that’s like having a team of 3/4 million people employed full-time on the program for an entire decade. Or that it’s the same as having a team of 10,000 people working regular 9-5 jobs for over 700 years.
SNDSOUL said:
Can anyone see the supplies and equipment that was left there with a telescope>?
I wondered about this, but apparently, it’s not possible. Not even Hubble can see such small objects. From
Hubble site:
A closeup view of Copernicus' terraced walls. Hubble can resolve features as small as 280 feet across.
I think Hubble is bumping up against an optical physics limitation (determined by size of the lense and how far away the object being viewed is).