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by DanBC 5283 days ago
I'd be interested to see comparisons between the engineering of getting humans to the moon versus keeping the LHC working.
1 comments

Apollo was way bigger than the LHC, $200B (today's dollars) vs $7B. The engineering of the LHC is impressive, but a lot of it is scaling such as bigger semiconducting magnets. With Apollo everything was unknown, huge rockets, space suits, life support, space rendezvous, cameras, pens, even Tang.
> With Apollo everything was unknown, huge rockets, space suits, life support, space rendezvous, cameras, pens, even Tang.

Tang wasn't invented for the space program, it was merely a commercial food product they happened to find a use for. The Space Pen was inspired by the needs of the space program and was used in it, but wasn't a prerequisite for it.

http://www.misconceptionjunction.com/index.php/2011/01/tang-...

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

Tang was a joke.

I believe the color video camera for was specially made by RCA, but the workhorse still camera was an off-the-shelf Hasselblad.

I had thought that the Space Pen was an existing commercial product. Apparently I was only half right. Thanks for the link.