Personally, I think we could produce a Saturn V today, but we would need to re-engineer it so the engineers of today could understand it in their own terms. ... Yes, as a society we have no sense of the value of corporate or project history.

As a computer scientist/programmer/engineer (mechanical by training) I know that we need to re-think problems from scratch, but we should do and evaluate the 'new' ideas with understanding the older ideas and implementations so we don't throw out the 'baby with the bath water'.

IMHO we got scared when a shuttle or two went down. As a society we are so 'event risk adverse' rather than being 'system risk averse' (we would rather lose a few thousand people a year in cars than less than a dozen in a shuttle crash or 300 in an aircraft crash). We have also traded 3000 lives (think 9/11 here) for 10,000 or more service peoples lives, let alone non-combatants on the 'other side'. -- I am not pro or anti-war. War, like any other endeavor of humanity, is just another balance we all need to reach collectively our value equation balance. I just wish we had had a Reagan around to deal with them.

The thing that really struck me about this was the focus that the engineers in Houston, the NASA contractors, and the astronauts put into solving the problems encountered along the way. They were able to compartmentalize their emotions and focus on the problems at hand. That ability allowed these three Americans to survive.

Thanks for posting!

that likes lots of government money...

Sadly, we can't build a Saturn V rocket today. Literally. The production lines are long gone as are many of the companies that built it themselves. Most of the engineers are dead or long retired, taking with them invaluable knowledge. NASA is spending billions trying to build a new heavy lift rocket, and thus far, has little to show for it. SpaceX will beat them to it for far less money. Elon Musk is in some ways a modern day Hank Reardon.

It is so sad... America must wake up and re-realize what it can do for itself and for others. So much ignorance in our nation!

I have used the Apollo 13 mission as a teaching tool for kids. An unreal set of circumstances showing the true excellence of man and his abilities.

Now we pay our 'enemies' the Russians to get into space. Who Is John Galt?

Talk about heroes. We are Americans and we simply breed such men and women. I often wonder if they realized how primitive their technology was compared to today. Even if they did, I doubt if that would have deterred them. Those men and women are still out there, bravely training with no hope of accomplishing anything near the Apollo missions. The Moonbase should be 20 years old by now and Mars should be well targeted. What happened to us? The question is rhetorical.

My favorite part is where Lauer says to Lovell something alon the lines: -"you went around the moon and back with a lot less computing power than an ipod."

A great posting, thanks. The engineers were the true heroes, and the whole team worked together, trusted each other, and succeeded together. Even knowing how it ended, I got emotional watching it.

That happened way back when I was a supply clerk in the Marines. I recall walking around in a state of high suspense and checking out the barracks TV when off-duty. It was almost as bad as also living through the Cuban Missile Crisis, both having a happy ending. .

I also grew up in the Apollo era but I had an advantage to it. My uncle work for Burroughs Computers and was on loan to the US Government. He was attached to NASA at Cape Kennedy and I got to spend summers with my aunt uncle in Florida. I actually got to see a couple of launches and got a tour of the facilities more than once. This is what started my interest in science and industry. Some of the people who were friends of my uncles were some of the brightest individuals of their time.

Here here

I grew up during the Project Apollo era. I remember Apollo 13. The one mission that was definitely not routine. They lost the moon, and almost lost their lives.

+1, Thanks for posting.

All of these men were brave heroes - every last one of them from Mercury through Apollo. The engineering and project management were a testament to how to do the job right. It's nice to see a documentary like this. The dramatic film The Right Stuff tarnishes the story of Gus Grissom and Ron Howard's Apollo 13 likewise tarnishes Jack Swigert. For further reading:
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-17/e...