Could America do this today?
Reasons why I think not:
- The men who sent us to the moon were WWII vets, from both sides (ahem, Werner von Braun). Current generations simply aren't made of the same stuff, haven't experienced an event where the entire country, every man woman and child, was working together on a massive, unified undertaking. These guys had, and that experience undoubtedly served to drive them to the success of the moon program. I don't doubt that, individually, we still have talent in this country, but we are sorely lacking in the teamwork and leadership department...
- America was a manufacturing powerhouse back then. We hardly manufacture anything now - would we subcontract half the work to the Chinese?
- The space program was funded on massive marginal tax rates that today's society would never support, lest we be accused of socialism.
- It took an incredible amount of failures to achieve this success. In today's climate of scandals over every failed test of a new aircraft and the subsequent hesitantness (for lack of a better word), I just don't see this happening. We were cranking out new fighter aircraft every 2-3years back then, and went from biplanes to the moon in just 30 years. What have we done in the last 30 years? The F-35, which is still not in service (AFAIK), began life as a program over 20 years ago, if that tells you anything.
- The space program happened when EPA and OSHA didn't exist. Imagine rocket engine testing with EPA air regulations, or all those exploding rockets resulting from the learn-from-your-failures mode the space program was working under at the time.
I'll bet the U.S. could do a bang up job of faking a new space mission, though. We're now great at special effects, movies, and computer games.
(Dleg is feeling a little cynical today!)
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