This an interesting essay and seems compelling to me. Because I am insufferable, I will pick the world’s smallest nit.
The Wright Brothers took 4 years to build their first successful prototype. It took another 23 years for the first mass manufactured airplane to appear, for a total of 27 years of R&D.
That’s true but artisanal airplanes were produced in the hundreds of thousands before mass manufacture. 200k airplanes served in WW1 just 15 years in. So call it 15 years of R&D.
Apollo 8, where it took 134 days between “what if we go to the moon?” to the actual landing.
Should be “flight” instead of “landing”. Apollo 8 was the first manned flight to the moon. The first landing was Apollo 11 in July 1969. Also, they just changed the Apollo 8 mission profile from earth orbit to lunar orbit with the same spacecraft—so the hardware was already existing.
This an interesting essay and seems compelling to me. Because I am insufferable, I will pick the world’s smallest nit.
That’s true but artisanal airplanes were produced in the hundreds of thousands before mass manufacture. 200k airplanes served in WW1 just 15 years in. So call it 15 years of R&D.
Piggybacking with another nitpick:
Should be “flight” instead of “landing”. Apollo 8 was the first manned flight to the moon. The first landing was Apollo 11 in July 1969. Also, they just changed the Apollo 8 mission profile from earth orbit to lunar orbit with the same spacecraft—so the hardware was already existing.