“Just think: in a few short decades leading up to Apollo 13 we went from horses to cars to jets to a space program.”
And using slide rules to boot! I understand the paper that Jim Lovell used to do his calculations (under much fatigue and adverse temperatures - and IMMENSE pressure) was sold to someone for only $13,000.
I would think it was worth 100X that, and should be in the Smithsonian.
(I don’t know, maybe it is now)
Your post is right on, btw.
Slide rules - good catch, I forgot to put that in.
Incredibly smart people worked for NASA. And I imagine many incredibly smart people still do; they just don’t have anything amazing to do as in something on the scale of the Apollo program.
Consider that our planet is rotating while traveling tens of thousands of miles per hour around the sun (which is also moving). Men figured out in a matter of just a few short years how to launch a rocket and send astronauts to a spot that the moon - which is revolving around our planet as it travels through space - will be a few days later. Then, the astronauts shoot towards a location that the Earth will be a few days after that and splash down in the ocean a few miles away from an aircraft carrier.
Wow.
Nearly 50 years after Apollo 13, many - if not most - Americans today would be hopelessly lost in the town they live in without GPS.