[suddenlybananas]

>It was only six years to go from the first multi-person spacecraft and first spacewalk to the first space station.

Yeah that's my entire point, technological process doesn't have a constant rate of acceleration. Some advances are quickly made one after another and others lag and take a very long time.

[Dylan16807]

How long do you think it would have taken to get a permanent moon presence if we kept up Apollo level funding indefinitely with that as the main goal? And since I only said "plausible", let's go with 80th-90th percentile best case scenario.

Even if technological progress stopped we could have launched enough parts to assemble a colony structure.

[suddenlybananas]

I'm not sure we would have one today. Maybe a token presence but definitely not the moon colony dreams of the 60s.

[Dylan16807]

A token colony is still a colony. If you meant a specific size I wish you had been more clear upfront.

[suddenlybananas]

A colony typically refers to a place where people permanently live and are colonising, e.g. setting up state structures, having children, etc.

[Dylan16807]

Which could be 20 permanent residents and 10 non-permanent slots. I don't think that requires too grand of a structure.

[suddenlybananas]

This is splitting hairs, but I was envisaging something more like the ISS but on the moon. A far cry from the 50s/60s dream of a grill and white picket fence on the moon.