31 ms·

Sorry, but it is hard for me to accept that explanation. You don't simply "lose" such technology or don't make a plan B in case it fails to work for some strang

Sorry, but it is hard for me to accept that explanation. You don't simply "lose" such technology or don't make a plan B in case it fails to work for some strange reason. More plausable explanation, however, is that it simply did not exist at all and they faked everything.

Unroasted6154 3y ago
You lose people, expertise and organizational structure. Those are more important than the "plans of the rocket". Not to mention, would nowadays engineers be able to work from the methods of back then? A lot of stuff would be faster to redesign from scratch (all the software and electronics for sure). NASA a radically changed it's focus an functions since the space race. Suppliers have changed too. They could do it again with enough funds and time, but it will take many years.
theonlybutlet 3y ago
Ofcourse we could make it in theory, but practically that's not the case. You don't just build a Saturn rocket and moonlander in your own factory (inhouse) one day. There is a massive supply chain. The development cost percentage points of US GDP. There were thousands of people involved. There also wasn't the internet. x factory responsibile for making component y, would call their supplier and buy an off the shelf component. Those suppliers no longer manufacture those components, why? No demand, probably obsolete etc. It's like trying to go buy a vacuum tube now when you could simply use a transistor. Imagine the cost of setting up a factory just to manufacturer vacuum tubes that have no other use. There's plenty suppliers that wouldn't have documented their manufacturing processes either, with the knowledge being handed down to whoever is doing the job. Orchestrating a plan to keep millions in the dark and ensuring thousands, upon thousands of people keep a secret to their deathbeds is a lot less plausible.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  "You don't just build a Saturn rocket and moonlander in your own factory (inhouse) one day. There is a massive supply chain" You miss the point. They used those rockets multiple times to go to the Moon, it's not like it was "do once and forget" situation. How could they simply forget things after doing it for so many times? You need extreme reliability and know-how to do those things consistantly over the span of a decade. There must have been a knowledge transfer for such an important feet of engineering. If not, then the whole thing is not really believable. Sorry.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Knowledge transfer requires practice. They haven't built one for 50 years, so there hasn't been knowledge transfer.
  - LorenDB 3y ago
    I'm sure that NASA has all the blueprints filed away somewhere, but the reason we don't have a Saturn V factory running today is not because NASA forgot how to make them. Instead, it's because of cost. Between the Apollo 13 disaster, the Vietnam War, and maybe some other factors, public interest and approval of continued Moon exploration wanted, and Congress revoked the planned funding for Apollo 18 through 20, opting instead to focus on programs like the Space Shuttle. Interestingly enough, the leftover Saturn V hardware was put to good use by launching Skylab missions and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, both of which turned out to be valuable steps in the US space program. So as much as it pains me to say, it may have been a good thing that the last three moon missions were canceled.
  - theonlybutlet 3y ago
    The last moon landing was 1972. That's 51 years ago. They were all part of the same Saturn programme, production actually ceased 4 years earlier in 1968. At the time it was the most complex machine ever built.
  - yourusername 3y ago
    >There must have been a knowledge transfer for such an important feet of engineering. You've never heard of the situation where no one knows how a business critical piece of software works? "Bob wrote it 20 years ago but he died last year". This kind of stuff happens all the time in the real world. If no one is paying for that knowledge and supply chain to be maintained it will atrophy and dissapear. That's why the US army is still buying tanks even though they have thousands in storage, they need a company to maintain the supply chain and institutional knowledge to build tanks. Are you imagining generations of engineers being tasked with knowing how to build a rocket with 1960's technology with parts from suppliers that no longer exist despite no one having any intention to ever buy such a rocket again and no one paying for the maintenance of that ability?
  - 3y ago
bell-cot 3y ago
Kinda like America's WWII battleships didn't really exist - it was all faked - because the U.S. no longer has the industrial capacity to actually build battleships?
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  There are now destroyers, frigates and aircraft carries that do the same job more efficiently. I can't really say how we now have a better rocket that can send people to the Moon.
  - DocTomoe 3y ago
    Neither destroyers, frigates or aircraft carriers do what a battleship did - delivering projectiles the size of a human some 15 kilometres away in a ballistic arch with some precision. We do have rocketry that is a lot more advanced than the Saturn V ever was - but it simply cannot, and does not do what the Saturn V did.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    > ...that do the same job more efficiently. I could argue details - but notice that, after battleships were no longer so important, it remained a critical priority for the U.S. Navy to be the "Reigning Superpower" on the world's oceans: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/b/budget-of-the-us-navy-1794-to-2004.html https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading... Vs. how interested was the U.S. Gov't in retaining "can go to the moon" capabilities after Apollo 17 (in Dec'72)? Can you name any post-Apollo, pre-2000 manned-moon-mission NASA programs which received serious funding?
dotnet00 3y ago
It's a completely acceptable explanation. Much more so than "it didn't exist at all" which requires enemies with thousands of nukes pointed at each other to conspire for 50+ years. The issues are pretty straightforward, when the SaturnV and lunar lander were being built, almost all of the design was done by hand, all of the parts were made by hand and the engineers made all sorts of little undocumented adjustments to the designs in the process. On top of that, the flight computers of the era were extremely primitive, large and heavy, and the design was done with this in mind. Finally, NASA's safety standards were much more lax at the time. Saturn V would be considered way too dangerous to fly crew on nowadays. Modern engineering methods are just too different to just recreate a Saturn V without effectively redesigning it from scratch, at which point it might as well be a much more capable vehicle like Starship.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  "Modern engineering methods are just too different to just recreate a Saturn V without effectively redesigning it from scratch, at which point it might as well be a much more capable vehicle like Starship." I'm all for it, and root for SpaceX and Musk to make it happen. What I'm saying all this time on this thread is following: "Man never went to the Moon before. Artemis will hopefully be the first. If man has been to the Moon multiple times using the same aging technology over 50 years ago, then it shouldn't be an issue to go there now. In fact, it should be much easier and cheaper, as the computers are 1000x more powerful nowadays, and we still have fuel/energy sources that were used then." Thank you for the discussion.
  - MRtecno98 3y ago
    Astronomers today measure the distance between Earth and the Moon by shining a laser beam towards it and measuring the time it takes to come back. Now, guess why the beam actually comes back instead of getting absorbed by the lunar surface? Because Apollo 11 left a mirror there half a century ago, it still works There are people alive, today, that can prove to you that we went to the moon just by shooting a laser beam in the sky, so yes, we did go to the moon.
panick21_ 3y ago
That such an ignornat thing to say. Do you think we could built an exact replica of the Model T and its manufacturing line? We could build something kind of like it, but it would require a lot of engineering. The type of plastic and cloth used is likely not manufactured anymore. The processes used and tools used don't exist anymore in the exact same way they did then. And the people trained to build those tools and operate them don't exist anymore. The idea that all technology once built can just be recreated without any issue is just complete nonsense. Do you not know anything about how technology works?

Unroasted6154 3y ago

You lose people, expertise and organizational structure. Those are more important than the "plans of the rocket". Not to mention, would nowadays engineers be able to work from the methods of back then? A lot of stuff would be faster to redesign from scratch (all the software and electronics for sure). NASA a radically changed it's focus an functions since the space race. Suppliers have changed too. They could do it again with enough funds and time, but it will take many years.

theonlybutlet 3y ago

Ofcourse we could make it in theory, but practically that's not the case. You don't just build a Saturn rocket and moonlander in your own factory (inhouse) one day. There is a massive supply chain. The development cost percentage points of US GDP. There were thousands of people involved. There also wasn't the internet. x factory responsibile for making component y, would call their supplier and buy an off the shelf component. Those suppliers no longer manufacture those components, why? No demand, probably obsolete etc. It's like trying to go buy a vacuum tube now when you could simply use a transistor. Imagine the cost of setting up a factory just to manufacturer vacuum tubes that have no other use. There's plenty suppliers that wouldn't have documented their manufacturing processes either, with the knowledge being handed down to whoever is doing the job. Orchestrating a plan to keep millions in the dark and ensuring thousands, upon thousands of people keep a secret to their deathbeds is a lot less plausible.

wheelerof4te 3y ago
"You don't just build a Saturn rocket and moonlander in your own factory (inhouse) one day. There is a massive supply chain" You miss the point. They used those rockets multiple times to go to the Moon, it's not like it was "do once and forget" situation. How could they simply forget things after doing it for so many times? You need extreme reliability and know-how to do those things consistantly over the span of a decade. There must have been a knowledge transfer for such an important feet of engineering. If not, then the whole thing is not really believable. Sorry.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Knowledge transfer requires practice. They haven't built one for 50 years, so there hasn't been knowledge transfer.
- LorenDB 3y ago
  I'm sure that NASA has all the blueprints filed away somewhere, but the reason we don't have a Saturn V factory running today is not because NASA forgot how to make them. Instead, it's because of cost. Between the Apollo 13 disaster, the Vietnam War, and maybe some other factors, public interest and approval of continued Moon exploration wanted, and Congress revoked the planned funding for Apollo 18 through 20, opting instead to focus on programs like the Space Shuttle. Interestingly enough, the leftover Saturn V hardware was put to good use by launching Skylab missions and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, both of which turned out to be valuable steps in the US space program. So as much as it pains me to say, it may have been a good thing that the last three moon missions were canceled.
- theonlybutlet 3y ago
  The last moon landing was 1972. That's 51 years ago. They were all part of the same Saturn programme, production actually ceased 4 years earlier in 1968. At the time it was the most complex machine ever built.
- yourusername 3y ago
  >There must have been a knowledge transfer for such an important feet of engineering. You've never heard of the situation where no one knows how a business critical piece of software works? "Bob wrote it 20 years ago but he died last year". This kind of stuff happens all the time in the real world. If no one is paying for that knowledge and supply chain to be maintained it will atrophy and dissapear. That's why the US army is still buying tanks even though they have thousands in storage, they need a company to maintain the supply chain and institutional knowledge to build tanks. Are you imagining generations of engineers being tasked with knowing how to build a rocket with 1960's technology with parts from suppliers that no longer exist despite no one having any intention to ever buy such a rocket again and no one paying for the maintenance of that ability?
- 3y ago

bell-cot 3y ago

Kinda like America's WWII battleships didn't really exist - it was all faked - because the U.S. no longer has the industrial capacity to actually build battleships?

wheelerof4te 3y ago
There are now destroyers, frigates and aircraft carries that do the same job more efficiently. I can't really say how we now have a better rocket that can send people to the Moon.
- DocTomoe 3y ago
  Neither destroyers, frigates or aircraft carriers do what a battleship did - delivering projectiles the size of a human some 15 kilometres away in a ballistic arch with some precision. We do have rocketry that is a lot more advanced than the Saturn V ever was - but it simply cannot, and does not do what the Saturn V did.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  > ...that do the same job more efficiently. I could argue details - but notice that, after battleships were no longer so important, it remained a critical priority for the U.S. Navy to be the "Reigning Superpower" on the world's oceans: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/b/budget-of-the-us-navy-1794-to-2004.html https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading... Vs. how interested was the U.S. Gov't in retaining "can go to the moon" capabilities after Apollo 17 (in Dec'72)? Can you name any post-Apollo, pre-2000 manned-moon-mission NASA programs which received serious funding?

dotnet00 3y ago

It's a completely acceptable explanation. Much more so than "it didn't exist at all" which requires enemies with thousands of nukes pointed at each other to conspire for 50+ years. The issues are pretty straightforward, when the SaturnV and lunar lander were being built, almost all of the design was done by hand, all of the parts were made by hand and the engineers made all sorts of little undocumented adjustments to the designs in the process. On top of that, the flight computers of the era were extremely primitive, large and heavy, and the design was done with this in mind. Finally, NASA's safety standards were much more lax at the time. Saturn V would be considered way too dangerous to fly crew on nowadays. Modern engineering methods are just too different to just recreate a Saturn V without effectively redesigning it from scratch, at which point it might as well be a much more capable vehicle like Starship.

wheelerof4te 3y ago
"Modern engineering methods are just too different to just recreate a Saturn V without effectively redesigning it from scratch, at which point it might as well be a much more capable vehicle like Starship." I'm all for it, and root for SpaceX and Musk to make it happen. What I'm saying all this time on this thread is following: "Man never went to the Moon before. Artemis will hopefully be the first. If man has been to the Moon multiple times using the same aging technology over 50 years ago, then it shouldn't be an issue to go there now. In fact, it should be much easier and cheaper, as the computers are 1000x more powerful nowadays, and we still have fuel/energy sources that were used then." Thank you for the discussion.
- MRtecno98 3y ago
  Astronomers today measure the distance between Earth and the Moon by shining a laser beam towards it and measuring the time it takes to come back. Now, guess why the beam actually comes back instead of getting absorbed by the lunar surface? Because Apollo 11 left a mirror there half a century ago, it still works There are people alive, today, that can prove to you that we went to the moon just by shooting a laser beam in the sky, so yes, we did go to the moon.

panick21_ 3y ago

That such an ignornat thing to say. Do you think we could built an exact replica of the Model T and its manufacturing line? We could build something kind of like it, but it would require a lot of engineering. The type of plastic and cloth used is likely not manufactured anymore. The processes used and tools used don't exist anymore in the exact same way they did then. And the people trained to build those tools and operate them don't exist anymore. The idea that all technology once built can just be recreated without any issue is just complete nonsense. Do you not know anything about how technology works?