No we didn't quit, we kept on going after Apollo 11 which won the so called
"race" .The lunar buggy was an incredible achievement and a testament to
keep on going in the interests of exploration not racing anyone which
initially was a motivator but morphed into real science missions. As far a
cost, not that much compared to the national budget and military spending.
Remember we were in Vietnam which cost trillions.
Apollo was a bargain with all the spin offs that we use today. Who knows
how long and how much these gadgets would have taken and cost if developed
on their own.
I know Kranz didn't coin the phrase about failure, it was just the movie
but we're using it to make a point. Also "successful failure" was said in
the movie.
Ken
On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 10:30 AM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
The phrase got famous when an actor said it in a movie. Kranz never said
it. Apollo was in fact very expensive, so much so that we quit doing it
after we won the race.
On 7/22/21 10:18 AM, roxanna Mason wrote:
That's where the phrase got famous, so he said failure was NOT an option,
so if "success is expensive" and Apollo 13 was a successful failure then I
wonder how much that success was?
K
On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 10:14 AM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Failure was very much an option (and Kranz never said it wasn't). If that
explosion had happened on the way back from the moon, they'd have died.
On 7/22/21 10:09 AM, roxanna Mason wrote:
Then I wonder how expensive was it to save the Apollo 13 astronauts since
failure wasn't an option?
Ken
On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 9:04 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Thu, 22 Jul 2021, Troy Prideaux wrote:
"if failure is not an option, success can get expensive" (PeterStibrany).
Oh Henry, that's one ripper quote!
Yeah, Peter really nailed that one.
The big reason why Gossamer Condor won the Kremer Prize (for man-powered
flight) with relative ease, after decades of failure by other groups,
was
that it was optimized, not for maximum performance, but for easy repair
--
for rapid recovery from failure. A test mishap that would sideline a
higher-tech effort for months was an overnight repair for G.C., so it
made
much more rapid progress, and was ready before it ran out of money.
Henry
