Space Exploration Today

[Jay Zepher]

If you could travel back in time to the late 60s or early 70s and were audacious enough to show everyone a smartphone, proudly boasting how advanced humans have become in the 21st century, one of your astounded listeners could easily put you in your place by asking, "Can you send people to the moon?"

That's right...People with 1960s technology could do what will still be beyond our capabilities for at least the next few years. For shame, America, to abandon such a great ability.

 

[Damaged Eagle]

One little EMP pulse and that smart phone is toast.

*****CHUCKLE*****

 

[MaryL]

The fact is building the engine that powered the Apollo the J2 Rocketdyne because the skillsets and the knowledge learned in the 60s is gone. And that being said whole new skills are being learned, generations ago they would never have dreamt of SpaceX or Blue Origin, either. Self landing rockets, seemed more like 50's "scientifiction".

 

[Manonthestreet]

The state of the global rocket industry in the 21st century (behindtheblack.com)

 

[MaryL]

Its amazing that computer that landed a man on the moon had a processor – an electronic circuit that performs operations on external data sources – which ran at 0.043 MHz. Your phone in your pocket? The latest iPhone’s processor is estimated to run at about 2490 MHz.

 

[MaryL]

I am in awe from the every single image sent back to us from mars rover opportunity or collecting samples of asteroids by OSIRIS-REx.