If we could get to the moon in the 1960s, why does it seem so hard to do it now in the 21st century?

Like we've all seen, or remember, the 1960s, we had giant computers that could now fit inside of a little calculator,

let alone the computing capacity of your smartphone. We had technology that is laughably out of

date by today's standards, and we just did it. And yet now it seems almost impossible.

Like we've been trying to recapitulate it for almost two decades now.

Like we've been hearing for decades, we're going back to the moon, NASA's back to,

we're headed back to the moon, more people on the moon.

It's taking forever.

Our current plans are bloated, horribly late, over budget, and it seems like it's getting worse.

What's going on?

Well, to set things up, let me paint the picture of the difference between the 1960s and 70s,

Apollo missions, and our current strategy with the Artemis project.

So let's start with Apollo.

On July 16, 1969, we made history.

At 9.30 in the morning, the Saturn 5 rocket,

the largest, most powerful rocket ever built,

ignited.

Capable of over 34.5 million newtons of thrust at launch, the Saturn 5 hoisted 48 tons of fuel, equipment, landers, life support, systems, communications, gear, a command

module, a descent module, and an assent module, and three

human beings into space. It was a three-stage rocket with the first two stages igniting,

burning, and detaching, before lofting the remaining spacecraft into a stable parking orbit

around the earth. After a couple orbits, the third stage ignited its own smaller rockets, boosting the spacecraft

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