Well, I was writing this because the PDF doesn't seem to mention "large budget" as a reason for the success, perhaps because it would be too obvious. But the Ap

Well, I was writing this because the PDF doesn't seem to mention "large budget" as a reason for the success, perhaps because it would be too obvious. But the Apollo program might still not have been particularly optimized for speed, even though that was the goal. For example, they possibly could have taken a more iterative approach in the Saturn V development, which could have resulted in an even earlier moon landing. It is hard to tell, because for such a large projects there is no good comparison class.