|
> but we certainly kept putting things into space (military and otherwise) and was much of that know-how not directly informed by the technology developed for Apollo? Building life support systems, the rockets themselves, etc. It was _informed_ by it, but, for instance the Saturn V's kerosene and hydrogen engines, developed at absolutely horrendous, unthinkable expense, on the justification that it was the moon race and that the cost would be amortised over expected hundreds or thousands of Saturn launches in the future, were thrown away (reusing the hydrogen one occasionally comes up as an idea, but has gone nowhere so far). Same for the Soviet stuff, to a large extent; the N-1's engines, also very sophisticated, were essentially abandoned (though a derivative was used a long, long time later in a Soyuz launcher). The Soviets did at least keep the Soyuz orbital vehicle (originally developed for their moon programme), but little else. This all made sense at the time; there suddenly wasn't much money, so reverting to the less capable, less complex, arguably by then previous-gen launchers was rational. But it was really a demonstration that, by then, neither state took any of this at all seriously (even before Apollo 11, the Soviets had all but abandoned their programme); if it had really been seen as a matter of national security, the Saturn C-5N and N1F and all the rest of the planned evolutions would have launched in their hundreds. |