They had to get enough money, preferably with enough extra to deal with unforeseen budget overruns.
They had to design the hardware, correctly, on the first try. This is a lot harder than it sounds.
They had to build the hardware, and get the operations aspects worked out.
Oh, and then they actually had to go to the moon. Let’s not overlook that particular challenge.
This is awful lot of things that have to go right. If any one of these fails, they’re screwed. This is not how you do practical engineering if you actually want to succeed.
It’s interesting to contrast them with SpaceX, whose plan was to start small, expect some failures, and gradually climb up the mountain instead of trying to reach the summit in one giant leap. They actually managed to reach orbit, and have a pretty promising future ahead of them.
So, in order to go to the moon, they had to do all of these things right:
They had to get enough money, preferably with enough extra to deal with unforeseen budget overruns.
They had to design the hardware, correctly, on the first try. This is a lot harder than it sounds.
They had to build the hardware, and get the operations aspects worked out.
Oh, and then they actually had to go to the moon. Let’s not overlook that particular challenge.
This is awful lot of things that have to go right. If any one of these fails, they’re screwed. This is not how you do practical engineering if you actually want to succeed.
It’s interesting to contrast them with SpaceX, whose plan was to start small, expect some failures, and gradually climb up the mountain instead of trying to reach the summit in one giant leap. They actually managed to reach orbit, and have a pretty promising future ahead of them.