And it was accomplished in 1969 — engineering with a slide rule. I wonder what was different with American culture 60 years ago that enabled such an achievement?
>I wonder what was different with American culture 60 years ago that enabled such an achievement?
You should read Peter theil's book zero to one then. In the book, he highlights how the culture have changed from taking deterministic risks to placing non-deterministic bets all over the place to minimize risks. This pessimism according to him came due to the numerous bubbles like dot-com bubble, the real estate crisis, and the clean energy bubble that have gone bust due to over optimism.
If we're talking specifically about the Apollo 11 mission, there are quite a few other differences as well. The obvious one was that it was entirely fueled by politics to "beat the Russians." The other fact that few people seem to talk about today is how incredibly dangerous it was. There were many individual components that had known failure rates - some of them as high as 50% - and if any of them failed everybody would 100% die. Now combine all of these. Based on the limited testing they did (and don't forget the first Apollo crew died in training), there was at best a 1/6 chance of the mission succeeding.
If you had the chance to go to the moon but knew you had about a 10% chance of success (the odds improved substantially with later missions), would you do it? And keep in mind, you literally watched your colleagues - the original crew that was supposed to be the first on the moon - burn to death.
For all intents and purposes, going to the Moon was a military campaign. We had to do it, even if we killed people in the process (the Russians killed way more people than we did in their attempts). Americans (I cannot speak for other countries and cultures) just don't have that mindset anymore, for better and for worse.
"not included are alleged unreported Soviet space accidents, which are considered fringe theories by a majority of historians."
Maybe you refer to the overall conditions of all those involved in the projects (construction workers etc)?
Otherwise, I agree with your premise of a military campaign, the moon landing just wouldn't have happened without all the earlier development of nuclear missiles. Everything about the rockets, their propulsion and their navigation was first developed to successfully bomb the planned targets with the nuclear and thermonuclear warheads.
> there was at best a 1/6 chance of the mission succeeding.
If you had the chance to go to the moon but knew you had about a 10% chance of success (the odds improved substantially with later missions),
That doesn't seem very plausible, given that six missions brought astronauts to the moon (plus one that famously failed but returning all the crew to earth alive).
If the initial odds were under 1/6, what brought them so much higher in the following missions that you had seven in a row without loss of human life?
I agree with you it seems so implausible that I question it myself. I do not know what upgrades were made to parts between missions. I believe a better understanding of atmospheric conditions can explain a lot of risk mitigation, but I can't imagine it being that significant.
Since I never actually mentioned it, my source is a documentary on Netflix (I don't remember which one, and it very well may no longer be there). Buzz Aldrin was describing how they were testing components, and one part in particular was tested 6 times and failed 3 times. There were some other parts he mentioned, and when you multiplied the cascading failures it came out to a 1/6 chance of success (he didn't calculate that number, and he mentioned there were other parts as well where he didn't list the failure rates - my 10% number is a fuzzy guess).
I admit memories are fuzzy, but I distinctly remember him saying there was a single component with a 50% failure rate. I assume they upgraded this part (as well as others) for future missions.
With all due respect to Buzz, I think there was a bit of “and the fish we caught was this big” in his storytelling. The moon landing is amazing enough on its own without him shooting off about parts that failed half the time. It just fuels conspiracy theories when one of the astronauts can’t help but (probably) exaggerate. Again, massive respect to the guy, but if he’s wondering why conspiracy theories exist, stories like this help fuel them.
Also let me be clear, the moon landing conspiracy theories have been debunked pretty thoroughly, and the landing has been documented in painstaking detail, but we should be mindful that such an incredible accomplishment will inspire incredulity. Like how some people think the great pyramids were made by aliens because how could such an ancient civilization build them. Our reaction to conspiracy theorists should be to debunk them and educate them, not to call them crazy. In this case, they aren’t crazy, because if someone tells you they went to the moon and returned, you are right to ask questions. (I’m not talking about bad-faith people who will deny all the evidence)
You should read Peter theil's book zero to one then. In the book, he highlights how the culture have changed from taking deterministic risks to placing non-deterministic bets all over the place to minimize risks. This pessimism according to him came due to the numerous bubbles like dot-com bubble, the real estate crisis, and the clean energy bubble that have gone bust due to over optimism.