What is the legacy of apollo and space tech generally

Claude Chats:

• [[ The Multifaceted Legacy of the Apollo Missions ]]

Current references:

• Apollo 11 accidents
• Planetary Society Apollo Budget
• Why it’s so difficult to land on the moon, even five decades after Apollo

When one thinks of the legacy of systems and organisations, one think of the tools and technologies that have outlasted the projects/programs that spun them into existence. For example, the manufacturing transistors moved from institutions outside of where they were discovered. Similarly, the personal computer and the network technologies did not remain caged in their homes at Xerox-PARC and Bell Labs but found their way to other manufacturers and eventually our homes.

it is hard to understand the legacy of the Apollo missions.

Some excerpts: Technology is significantly better today; your cellphone has more computational power than computers had in the 1970s.

We did not get ‘dumber’ since the Apollo landings but since the ’70s there have been no astronauts and pilots on the landers to correct what the computers can’t or won’t.

Csaba Palotai, a professor of physics and space sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. Source

If we had a billion dollars to do this mission, our chances of success would go way up. But we’re trying to do this at a much lower cost, which means you have to try many more times before you get to that breakthrough moment of, ‘OK, now we know exactly how to do it at this price point. Let’s keep doing it again and again.

John Thornton, CEO of Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology