The Enduring Legacy And Lessons From The Apollo Moon Missions

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The Enduring Legacy And Learnings From The Apollo Moon Missions
Forbes  May 12, 2017 @ 01:31 PM



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Were the remaining missions after the first man to land on the moon just a show off? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by C Stuart Hardwick, Award-Winning Scifi Author, on Quora:

Were the remaining missions after the first man to land on the moon just a show off? No, they were there to study the moon.

The Apollo 11 landing was mostly just to prove they could do it without dying. Almost the first thing Armstrong did after descending the ladder was collect the “contingency sample,” a rock he collected and stuck in a pocket in case something went wrong and they had to abort and leave in a hurry.

On Apollo 11, the crew only spent 2.5 hours outside, during which time they collected samples, deployed experiments, and examined and photographed the lunar surface. Each mission after that was longer, did more, and landed in more interesting terrain.

Apollo 11 landed on the most boring spot on the moon that anyone could find—nice and flat and safe. By Apollo 15, they landed near Hadley Rille, an 80 mile long, thousand foot deep chasm surrounded by mountains up to 3 miles high, and they carried a nuclear powered science package and a rover.

Apollo 17 added a professional geologist to that kit, and spent a total of 22 hours squeezing science out of 3 EVAs over three days. They found boulders, spotted from space by Apollo 15 that had rolled down embankments, leaving chains of craters in their wakes. They found orange soil. And they found Helium-3, an isotope that we may one day return for to mine and power our cities back home.

The thing you have to remember is, the Apollo program cost 25 billion dollars, but almost all of that was research and development. Having invested 22 billion or so in getting to the moon, it would have been stupid not to send a few more missions and learn all we could from the endeavor. The stupid thing is, if we had flown the last three missions that had been planned, they would have cost far less less, proportionally, and taught us more, since every mission built on the lessons of those that came before it, and could do that much more.

The Apollo program was a triumph unique in human history. But it was also a colossal waste—not because we went, but because we went in a hurry, spurred by fear and pride. That drove up the cost many fold, and sent the manned space program in what was almost certainly a less productive, less efficient direction than we might otherwise have achieved.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/05/12/the-enduring-legacy-and-learnings-from-the-apollo-moon-missions/#5490ea1c4a63