Could the Apollo 11 moon landing be duplicated today? ‘Lots of luck with that’
latimes.com
latimes.com
Transistor densities increased 2 orders of magnitude (~100x) between 1995 and 2005. Integer operations were a little less, maybe 1.5 oom, over the same period. When you say that PCs stagnated over that period, in what context did you mean?
Also this: https://www.tnhh.net/posts/google-maps-insane-backward-compa...
I think YouTube (and possibly Facebook) might be among the only other web services having significant qualitative impact on people's lives. Maybe Uber/Lyft for an American audience used to owning cars.
There's definitely a sense in which the 90s marks the beginning of the era of the recognizably "modern" computer. The oldest computer you can run Linux on will be from the 90s. GUIs settled in the 90s - you can make a modern machine look like Windows 95 with nothing more than a desktop theme.
Maybe "matured" is a better word than "stagnated".
Then humanity can go to the Moon, Mars, toroidal space stations, build high speed rail, maglev, and whatever else might be in the pipeline. Ignoring that everyone sold off the pipeline.
With luck, my children's generation can rediscover government that isn't quite so comic book in its generation selfishness. With both left and right remembering to occasionally doing the things that are right and helps everyone. Like build housing, create and support public services, develop infrastructure and big national vanity (Apollo, Concorde, Bullet trains etc) and science projects.
So you can ask the question: if it would be rational for society to do $THING in its own collective self-interest, e.g. incentivize more community projects, then why doesn't it do that? And perhaps the answer is, within the current context, moving to that new state is no longer reachable...
When your value system is narcissism with book keeping, the consequences are perfectly predictable.
Add in that climate fix will require government action on a scale unimaginable since WW2, and the very high degree of engagement of teens approaching adulthood, and I think there's hope for a better outcome. Whether it comes through soon enough is another question entirely.
The regression of recent years is disturbing, but the US managed to put humans on the moon in times when it was much more divided and unabashedly racist than today. I haven't said anything about greed in general, but remember that the largesse of those times was leaving out large untouchable chunks of the population.
Contrary to your comment, society - in general, was more uniform and ridged. There were faults, and obvious a repressed 20% or so that were not really even part of society (blacks, hippies, etc). But the norms, the suits, the ties, those who made up the vast bulk of society. They were all people from (or raised during) WWII which had a unifying effect. They were the people who got stuff done like going to the moon, not the 20% impacting social change. Both were necessary to achieve growth, one technological, one social.
Today, we have primarily been focusing on the social aspects of society. Corporations, taking the place of technological growth. Largely, because society doesn’t want the technological growth from the government, they want social welfare and “fairness”. Both of which, we honestly seem to have diminishing returns on at this point.
NASA hasn't been able to get to the Moon, or Mars, because NASA has been structurally incapable of deciding to 1) go to a destination, and 2) do only the things that help to get to that destination. Instead, everyone has to protect their turf and their technology, the net result being that NASA isn't allowed to go to the moon or to mars the easy way -- they have to invent a ridiculously complicated way that keeps all of their constituencies happy and their pet project funded.
EDIT> Which, I guess, was the point of the original post.
Far more "me" rather than "us" focused than previously. Not forgetting the neoliberal revolution - selfishness as policy. Net result is depriving those following generations, the nation, the community to an unprecedented degree, whether in education, housing, inequality, wages, services and so on.
There's nothing inherently wrong with Baby Boomers; they're just the first generation to be raised on mass media and provide a stark contrast to an unbroken chain of humanity before them. Things are getting worse, not better.
>With both left and right remembering to occasionally doing the things that are right and helps everyone.
That's not possible when we have less in common than before.
The music is briefly disturbed by a low rumble from the front yard, and our time-traveler glances through the window: A metal conveyance is coming up the street at an incredible speed – with not a horse in sight. It's enclosed with doors and windows, like a house on wheels, and it turns into the yard, and the doors open all at once, and two grown-ups and four children all get out - just like that, as if it's the most natural thing in the world! He notices there is snow on the ground, and yet the house is toasty warm, even though no fire is lit and there appears to be no stove. A bell jingles from a small black instrument on the hall table. Good heavens! Is this a "telephone"? He'd heard about such things, and that the important people in the big cities had them. But to think one would be here in his very own home! He picks up the speaking tube. A voice at the other end says there is a call from across the country - and immediately there she is, a lady from California talking as if she were standing next to him, without having to shout, or even raise her voice! And she says she'll see him tomorrow!
Oh, very funny. They've got horseless carriages in the sky now, have they? What marvels! In a mere 60 years!
But then he espies his Victorian time machine sitting invitingly in the corner of the parlor. Suppose he were to climb on and ride even further into the future. After all, if this is what an ordinary American home looks like in 1950, imagine the wonders he will see if he pushes on another six decades!
So on he gets, and sets the dial for our own time.
And when he dismounts he wonders if he's made a mistake. Because, aside from a few design adjustments, everything looks pretty much as it did in 1950: The layout of the kitchen, the washer, the telephone... Oh, wait. It's got buttons instead of a dial. And the station wagon in the front yard has dropped the woody look and seems boxier than it did. And the folks getting out seem ...larger, and dressed like overgrown children. And the refrigerator has a magnet on it holding up an endless list from a municipal agency detailing what trash you have to put in which colored boxes on what collection days.
But other than that, and a few cosmetic changes, he might as well have stayed in 1950.
Let's pause and acknowledge the one exception to the above scenario: The computer. Instead of having to watch Milton Berle on that commode-like thing in the corner, as one would in 1950, you can now watch Uncle Miltie on YouTube clips from your iPhone. But be honest, aside from that, what's new? Your horseless carriage operates on the same principles it did a century ago. It's added a CD player and a few cup holders, but you can't go any faster than you could 50 years back. As for that great metal bird in the sky, commercial flight hasn't advanced since the introduction of the 707 in the 1950s. Air travel went from Wilbur and Orville to bi-planes to flying boats to jetliners in its first half-century, and then for the next half-century it just sat there, like a commuter twin-prop parked at Gate 27B at LaGuardia waiting for the mysteriously absent gate agent to turn up and unlock the jetway.
...
'I suggest the real reason we have not been to the moon since 1972 is that we cannot any longer do it. Humans have lost the capability. 'Of course, the standard line is that humans stopped going to the moon only because we no longer wanted to go to the moon, or could not afford to, or something... But I am suggesting that all this is BS... I suspect that human capability reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75 – at the time of the Apollo moon landings – and has been declining ever since.'
Can that be true? Charlton is a controversialist gadfly in British academe, but, comparing 1950 to the early 21st century, our time traveler from 1890 might well agree with him. And, if you think about it, isn't it kind of hard even to imagine America pulling off a moon mission now? The countdown, the takeoff, a camera transmitting real-time footage of a young American standing in a dusty crater beyond our planet... It half-lingers in collective consciousness as a memory of faded grandeur, the way a 19th century date farmer in Nasiriyah might be dimly aware that the Great Ziggurat of Ur used to be around here someplace."
--From Mark Steyn's "After America"
Weather forecasts have improved tremendously, giving tornado warnings which are useful. Knowledge is instantly available instead of just hoping that the local library has a book on the topic.
The house might look the same now as in the 50s, but life has really changed a lot.
Up until about the mid-90s, when computers and the Internet started to become consumer commodities, technology was The Future. When you bought an 8-bit micro to learn BASIC you weren't buying a nearly-useless blob of circuitry that crawled along so slowly you could barely do anything with it - you were buying The Future. It was the same Future that Apollo, Star Trek, electronic hobby culture, and
Around 2000 - in fact around 9/11 - that Future disappeared and was replaced by a reversion to idiot tribalism. A few elements continued - notably gender and identity politics - but the last product that came from The Future was the iPhone. And that turned out to be a kind of shrink-wrapped version that turned you into a passive consumer of The Future instead of someone who could help build it.
Life has changed in that it's now far more backward looking, and there's no optimistic Future to build and look forward to. The Future is just as likely to be corporate, brutally oppressive, manipulative, inhumane, systemically dishonest, psychopathic, disempowering, and dystopian as it is to be a positive sun-filled utopia full of incredibly bright, competent, and creative people doing amazing things.
This will probably change again at some point in the future, but humanity seems to be going through one of its depressive self-destructive phases at the moment, and it's going to take a while to find that collective sense of optimism, possibility, and adventure.
Our traveller stares out through the double-glazed window which keeps heat in and noise out. The house is toasty warm yet the heating hasn't been on for a while, but the roof and wall insulation is invisible to them. One room over, the cutlery is being cleaned in a dishwasher so quiet our traveller doesn't consciously register that it is running at all. The buttons on the telephone reflect that the exchange has electronic switching instead of human operators plugging in wires, but this is not obvious.
Were it night time, they could marvel at the switching speed and brightness of the LED bulbs. If they stayed longer perhaps a year with no power cuts would interest them. A ride in the car outside would not reveal disk brakes, power assisted steering, crumple zones, fuel injection, catalytic converter or make clear the Interstate Highway routes. Air conditioning they might feel, but GPS and dashboard camera might pass as uninteresting blank boxes. They can't compare the smoothness and quietness of the vehicle, or the reliability of motoring with 1950, or the convenience of calling a breakdown truck when the mechanic has a cellular telephone in the cabin.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, our traveller cannot tell it has a quartz movement and a small battery, and has not needed adjusting or winding in several years. Overhead, radioactive material ionizes air and causes a current between charged plates, but the traveller is unaware of smoke detectors. A device able to cook food using microwave energy is mistaken for a traditional oven and dismissed. The orchestra is still playing in the house, this time not from a radio with a small choice of stations, but from an internet service with several million songs, but the workings are invisible and therefore unnoticed. The speaker came over the Pacific Ocean, for an amount of money that would drop jaws if known, but jaws stay still.
Our traveller does not contract the Polio virus, but thinks nothing of it. They undergo no CAT or MRI scan, experience no painless dentist visit. Nor do they realise they even have DNA which could be tested for anything. Out on the road, a Lithium Ion battery powered vehicle moves past the window, but attracts no attention. Far overhead, a space station orbits, footprints exist on the lunar surface, and a spyplane passes by on the edge of space while travelling faster than the speed of sound. Ordinary invisible impossibilities. Straight through our traveller's head passes digital video signals, from a radio controlled plane; they will be received by a small antennae and then shown to a hobbyist wearing a head-mounted display. At the same time, digital television signals - once passing through an undersea optical fibre - cross the room and move towards a hiking group on a nearby hill, people wearing light yet dry artificial fabrics and carrying an entire tent in a small backpack.
Passing the affordable yet durable Ikea furniture, mistaking it for more expensive items with worse fire resistance, mistaking the DVD and BluRay collection for a bookshelf of glossy-spined texts along the way, our traveller does not order a takeaway, does not explore the wide range of foreign cuisine foods in the freezer, or notice the absence of sewing machine and thread in the cupboards and become curious about the changes to clothing which makes home repair unnecessary. Hot water comes on demand as in 1950, but the lack of water tank makes no difference to the effect.
The clean air act of 1956 makes London air more breathable. The air has no leaded gasoline fumes. For whatever that's worth to our traveller, who is only looking for macro scale changes immediately apparent to a glance from a person from 1890. But not looking very closely, for a desktop calculator, a biro, an absence of logarithm book, few stamps for letters, and spectacles so thin and light with lenses personalised one could hardly believe it, are too subtle for a quick glance to take in. Struck with an idea, they decide to take a look in the workshop - garage, shed, place where tools will be - and there they are, garden tools, same as ever, painted hobby soldiers quietly not made of lead, a soldering iron, and of course a bicycle. But they don't pick it up to notice how light and strong the frame is, or observe the LED lighting as anything noteworthy. A treadmill puzzles them for a moment - they guess what it is, but why is it here? Several things like it, does the house owner run a gymnasium?
What they do see is a wall of bright plastic tubs, one apparently containing a dismembered Christmas tree. They aren't made of wood, or cardboard, and they aren't painted. The material is unusual - were these anywhere in 1950? This isn't a Bakelite telephone, for sure. Inside, small and thin and very very light bags - some coloured, some transparent, a label, "plastic". Suddenly they notice it everywhere they look. That wasn't like 1950. Some things are hanging from the wall by means of a scratchy rope which sticks to itself. Superglue, white-out correctional fluid, WD-40, unfamiliar products to a house of 1950.
Somehow still unimpressed, they walk back past the non-stick cooking items, past the CFC-free energy efficient refrigerator, past the gas cooker which needs no matches to light it, past the Mandelbrot fractal design on a mug, over the Penrose tiling on the floor, noticing the "broken" headphones with their missing wire, unaware of the electronic music they aren't playing. There's no note on the fridge reminding anyone to feed the cat, as a timed food dispenser does that. Instead our traveller recoils at a picture - a coloured woman sitting next to a white man, in a restaurant, both smiling. No sign of argument or police removing her from the premises. She's holding - drinking from? - something bizarre, a cylinder of metal with a ring top. Behind her, two golden arches on the wall. On the table a child playing with a toy vehicle with a skirt instead of wheels.
Puzzled again, the traveller looks around at the sheer amount of stuff in the home, how wealthy are these people?
Alex: "The answer is; 'First Word Spoken From The Surface Of The Moon'"
I also wonder how common privately held telescopes and radar equipment is, stuff that could detect a spacecraft on the way to the moon. It seems practically impossible to spot an actual landing with a telescope, but you could probably determine if something about the right size had acclerated out of Earth orbit and was heading to the moon. Window of hours, probably.
It'd be expensive to fake all this with enough fidelity to foil analysis tools that exist today (much less tools that will be available over the next few decades). It's probably cheaper to actually land on the moon again :-)
The Russians could certainly track the vehicle on radar, at least on the boost there and return trajectory, and pick up any of its signals. Jodderal Bank in the UK certainly did. There’s no way they could reasonably have fooled the entire global optical and radio astronomy community plus the Russians.
That’s all aside from the fact the limitations of video technology at the time would have made faking the video impossible because the tape tech to record a transmission that long didn’t exist for almost another decade. Or the fact thousands of people would have had to be in on the scam, many of them not even American.
Also since then, multiple Lunar observation missions have photographed the equipment and even the dust trails left by the lunar rovers. The Chinese would also certainly know by now, with their recent high resolution surveys and landings on the moon.
My understanding is that people believe that they did indeed launch a rocket but that the landing on the moon was faked. Some claim they were in orbit around the earth the whole time, some others claim they went around the moon but staged the landing. There are even some who believe that we did land on the moon but there was a tape that was staged in the event of an accident. The level of moon landing denial varies by each and every person.
My two personal favourites being the people who believe we didn't go to the moon and get all our technology from aliens, and the truly amazing Krishna version;
>"The Vedic account of our planetary system is already researched, concluded, and perfect. The Vedas state that the moon is 800,000 miles farther from the earth than the sun. Therefore, even if we accept the modern calculation of 93 million miles as the distance from the earth to the sun, how could the “astronauts” have traveled to the moon–a distance of almost 94 million miles–in only 91 hours (the alleged elapsed time of the Apollo 11 moon trip)? This would require an average speed of more than one million miles per hour for the spacecraft, a patently impossible feat by even the space scientists’ calculations.
>Another important reason why the manned moon landing must be a hoax is that, according to the Vedas, each planet has its particular standard of living and atmosphere, and no one can transfer from one planet to another without becoming properly qualified. This means that if someone wants to go to Mars, for instance, he has to give up his present gross material body and acquire another one suitable for life on that particular planet. Vedic knowledge teaches that the living being doesn’t die with the death of the body, but that he is an eternal spirit soul. As Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita, “As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death” (Bhagavad-gita, 2.13). At the time of death the human being transfers to another material body according to the desires he cultivated and the work he performed during his lifetime. Therefore, since the moon has a particular standard of life and atmosphere, if one wants to travel there he has to adapt his material body to the conditions of that planet."
https://krishna.org/man-on-the-moon-a-colossal-hoax-that-cos...
Furthermore it's often suggested that the motion effect of moving in zero G was created by over-cranking the camera, but that's only possible with a film camera. Any stage involving film would have left frame marks, and effect like over-cranking on video tape wasn't possible until years later. Finally the best video technology of the time was from Japan, not the USA, so the US didn't have the technical capacity to develop specialist tech just for the landings. Even using much later tech from a decade or more later, the manipulations would be easily detectable nowadays in the recordings. Finally, they needed to use radio telescopes to receive the video transmission from the moon. They'd have needed a rig much bigger than the Apollo vehicles had to receive a video transmission from earth with enough bandwidth, to then re-transmit back.
A real-time faked video relayed from earth would have had very little manipulation or 'effects' to simulate low-G motion. That really just doesn't seem plausible, and again thousands of people would have had to have known about it and never talked.
Problem being there's no more reason to do it now than there was then. Everything you can do on the moon you can do better in earth orbit. Every reason I get quoted for building a permanent presence on the moon requires technology that's decades away at best. The moon is just a distraction from the real challenge: Mars. We're too unmotivated and uncommitted to shoot for Mars so we're going to go jump around on the dead rock next door and pretend that means anything at all.
That beats every other consideration, ease-wise.
Either way, I think any full time habitats will have to be underground ob both Moon and Mars because of the radiation.
If we have humans at a site, we can be like "Hey, take this pick-axe and go dig over there".
To get a robot to do that requires up-front design, development, funding, and the inevitable turf-wars and politics.
Imagine going out to weed your garden vs. convincing a committee with various unaligned priorities to fund a project to build a system to weed your garden. Four years later, it's cancelled due to new President / shifting priorities.
Humans are just generally capable at a level that robots are not -- it allows for less pre-planning, and all the pre-planning is what kills NASA's ability to do anything in a timely and efficient manner.
EDIT> I am in awe of the work done to e.g. put Curiosity on Mars, but the longer we drag out the planning and dev phase, the greater the chance the political and bureaucratic effects will derail the engineering.