Considering the relative speed of literally everything we can experience as humans, and that light ranks at the tippy top of every single one of them as INSTANT in pretty much any context other than math homework, it’s honestly pretty fucking wild that we not only got humans 1.3 light-seconds away from Earth, but got them back alive to tell about it.
That is straight up amazing.
niktemadur@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
…and we only did it because there was a dick-waving contest between two nations.
passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Soviets had no interest in going to the moon (yet) and were more focused on living in space before going outside earth’s orbit. The US was waving it in public on its own
wewbull@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Impressive rewriting of history.
I guess the N1 was never built, right?
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The US wanted to beat the Soviets at space, and the reality was when it came heavy lifting rockets the soviets were way, way ahead. The moonshot was a different problem that would require a different solution than simply “bigger rocket,” so the US made that the goal. They weren’t sure they could beat the Russians to the moon, but they knew they couldn’t beat them in a lifting contest for something like a space station.