As for courage, I submit that 1) it has nothing to do with the topic at hand and 2) you really don’t know what you’re talking about.

As I said. Critical mass is nearing.

Agreed. Evans was arguing that there should have been a robust Apollo Applications Program to derive some real value from these manned lunar landings, which he otherwise viewed as a stunt. But that never happened, so Apollo remained a stunt, which is the point I’m making. (And that there are knowledgeable, even experienced, people like Evans who refer to Apollo as stunt in the first place.)

“But now by following the principal of going small it can be done for a fraction of the costs of the Apollo program. The Falcon Heavy for example could deliver ca. 12 metric tons cargo to the lunar surface or send a crewed Dragon capsule round-trip for ca. $200 milion in launch cost.”

You don’t need to convince me on this. But other Apollo-worshippers on this forum will dismiss your point about efforts like Golden Spike and Bigelow.

The article only does that if the other poster retracts his claim that Apollo represented 60% of the demand for ICs during the 1960s, and replaces it with a statement that Apollo only represented a significant amount of the demand for ICs for a short time period in the early 1960s. The idiot never did that, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. He/she would rather live in their own Apollo astronaut-worshipping fantasy world and use random, inaccurate tidbits from likely imaginary TV shows to justify policy. So be it. The rest of us will continue to smack him/her upside the head with reality.

It’s not exactly a mystery.

There was a lot left after Apollo. But it was decided that the nation needed a lower cost launch system, which is what the shuttle was supposed to provide.

Why the shuttle failed to deliver those lower launch costs is another question in the history of cosmonautics.

“one performed or undertaken chiefly to gain attention or publicity”

Apollo was a demonstration of US technical superiority.

IMO, you are also mistaking the kind of courage shown by those who made those flights with the
kind of courage stuntment have.
They are very different, IMO.

Regardless, there are Apollo managers who viewed the effort as an empty stunt. Like Tom Evans, the former head of the Advanced Lunar Missions Study Program in the NASA Headquarters Office of Manned Space Flight during Apollo, who stated that a manned lunar landing had “too much the flavor of a stunt to be the final goal of a $20 billion national effort”:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/the-proper-course-for-lunar-exploration-1965/

What Evans was saying was not that Apollo shouldn’t have been done, but that it didn’t go far enough. He was arguing in favor of establishing space stations on the Moon as a prelude to colonization by using the Apollo architecture. Back then it would have been too expensive. But now by following the principal of going small it can be done for a fraction of the costs of the Apollo program. The Falcon Heavy for example could deliver ca. 12 metric tons cargo to the lunar surface or send a crewed Dragon capsule round-trip for ca. $200 milion in launch cost.

Bob Clark

I think that article suggests you are both partially right:

Integrated Circuits and the Space Program: A Partial Retraction.
Posted by: Michael Mandel on July 19

“The best source I found was a 1996 book called Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer by Eldon Hall, who was one of the main designers of the Apollo computer (a search will find this on Google books). Here are four of the most relevant paragraphs.”

“This action made NASA’s Apollo Program the largest single consumer of integrated circuits between 1961 and 1965. Design and production of the Block I Apollo computer consumed about 200,000 Micrologic elements.”

“Texas Instruments delivered 100,000 integrated circuit components by the end of 1964 to Autonetics Inc. for the Minuteman II guidance computer. In 1965, deliveries increased to 15, 000 per week, making the Air Force program the largest single consumer.”

“Long before the production phase was complete, even the two giants, Fairchild and Texas Instruments, dropped out. They apparently considered the Micrologic product line obsolete and moved on to “newer and better” products, more advanced technologies.”

“Fortunately for the Apollo Program, the Philco Corporation Microelectronics Division maintained production for the life of the project. The Apollo Program had a job to do. It could not continue the necessary design changes to keep up with the technology’s state of the art.”

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/07/integrated_circ.html

The previous article he refers to was one where he questioned the economic benefits of the Apollo program. After a barrage of criticism he edited it:

The Economic Value of the Space Program (corrected version).
Posted by: Michael Mandel on July 19
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/07/the_economic_fa.html

Bob Clark

Yeah. Well I am not sure what English usage of the word you refer to but on occasion I use this dictionary when in doubt.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stunt

“: an unusual or difficult feat requiring great skill or daring; especially : one performed or undertaken chiefly to gain attention or publicity”

You are rapidly approaching critical mass to the DCSCA kind I am afraid.

No, it’s an accurate statement. When I wrote that your TV show about Apollo integrated circuits was unreferenced, you wrote in a post dated April 24, 2013 at 6:52 pm:

“Unrefernced??? CBS News 60 minutes?”

In other posts, you claim that your Apollo integrated circuits show appeared on NOVA on PBS.

Again, when you figure out your bullshit, decide which network (CBS, PBS, or other) and series (60 Minutes, NOVA, or other) your Apollo integrated circuits show appeared on, and provide a video, a link, credits, or a show title so that we know it’s not imaginary, then I’ll be glad to call up the producers and correct their figure.

“It’s your Apollo ‘stunt’ claim has been easily refuted by the very tect you cited”

Here’s the text I cited:

“[President Kennedy]: ‘… you can learn most of what you want scientifically through instruments and putting a man on the moon really is a stunt and it isn’t worth that many billions… it does look like a stunt'”

http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2011/05/jfk-feared-apollo-would-look-like-stunt.html

“Thomas Evans headed up the Advanced Lunar Missions Study Program in the NASA Headquarters Office of Manned Space Flight… Evans told assembled members of the AAS that ‘the idea of a manned [landing] on the moon was so spectacular. . .that [it] dominated most pronouncements and thoughts on the space program.’ He argued, however, that this objective had ‘too much the flavor of a stunt to be the final goal of a $20 billion national effort.'”

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/the-proper-course-for-lunar-exploration-1965/

“But although President Kennedy’s objective was duly accomplished,” wrote the Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in 1987, “the Apollo Program had no logical legacy.” It was a technological dead end. One reporter likened the whole race to the Moon to a dog chasing a car… The dog, somewhat uncertain what to do once it had the car, hesitated, marked it as dogs will, and then walked away… Like the Apollo Program, the Space Shuttle was a spectacular stunt with little or no payoff.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ax9ZoMomcCIC&pg=PT65&lpg=PT65&dq=apollo+program+stunt&source=bl&ots=TtRGwxlv-O&sig=KZG-EpqlcxnWROHmGFzhifN6QFI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=p492Ud7OLcT84APN44HYCg&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBQ

“Project Apollo: Stunt or Portent?

Magnificent as they were, the launch vehicles that carried men to the moon turned out to be too expensive for other missions. The choice of lunar-orbit rendezvous as the mission mode – largely dictated by the end-of-the-decade challenge – produced two spacecraft ideally adapted to their function but without sufficient margin for growth to advance the exploration of the moon as far as scientists wanted. Apollo’s scientific results were of vital interest to only a very small fraction of the scientific community and did not authoritatively answer the questions scientists hoped they would answer before the first landing. (As one critic caustically commented, the scientists were able to obtain ‘a neater fix, so to speak, on the number of angels who can dance on the point of a pin.’)”

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4214/contents.html

“As fascinating and awesome as the Apollo program was, there is some truth behind dissenters’ opinions that the program was little more than a stunt.”

http://amyshirateitel.com/2011/06/21/what-to-do-after-the-moon/

“At the height of the Cold War, the superpowers spared no expense in funding the latest space spectacular. Dazzling stunts in space, not cost-cutting, were the order of the day. No one bothered to read their price tag.

But after 1969, the Soviets dropped out of the race to the moon and, like a cancer, the land war in Asia began to devour the budget. The wind gradually came out of the sails of the space program; the Nielsen ratings for each moon landing began to fall. The last manned mission to the moon was Apollo 17, in 1972.

As Isaac Asimov once commented, we scored a touchdown, then took our football and went home.”

http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/16/apollo-moon-landing-anniversary-opinions-contributors-cost-money.html

“Face the facts. The Mercury program was a stunt. The Gemini program was a stunt. And the Apollo program was a stunt. President Kennedy’s original challenge for lunar landing had to be done ‘by the end of this decade’ meant that a magnificent stunt was all that could be accomplished. There was not time to develop the basic technologies, techniques and infrastructure that would make manned space exploration safe, reliable, and sustainable, or even to simply actually explore the Moon. All Apollo could accomplish — and that just barely — was to send two men to the surface of the Moon and then bring them back again after a stay of no more than a matter of hours. The ‘giant leap’ was in reality a tiny step away from just grabbing a handful of moondirt and scooting quickly back to Earth, never to return. That was all that was required to prove that the United States was the technological and organizational superior to the Soviet Union, and that was the real objective.

It was a stunt. That does not mean that great engineering wasn’t done, or that tremendous courage wasn’t required, or that good science wasn’t accomplished. But it was a stunt, because it truly was not designed to lead to anything else.

We have to stop thinking of manned space exploration in terms of doing stunts.”

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/870/1

Only an idiot with no reading comprehension would think any of those quotes — one of which comes from President Kennedy, two of which come from Apollo managers, and one of which comes from a volume commissioned by the NASA HQ History Office — state that Apollo was anything other than a stunt.

“Guest was correct.”

Guest referenced a retraction which shows your statement that Apollo bought 60% of the ICs during the 1960s to be false:

“Texas Instruments delivered 100,000 integrated circuit components by the end of 1964 to Autonetics Inc. for the Minuteman II guidance computer. In 1965, deliveries increased to 15,000 per week, making the Air Force program the largest single consumer.

Long before the production phase [of Apollo] was complete, even the two giants, Fairchild and Texas Instruments, dropped out. They apparently considered the Micrologic product line obsolete and moved on to ‘newer and better’ products, more advanced technologies.

… well before the Apollo program reached the moon, commercial technology has leapt well past the space program.

… it’s clear that I overstated my case in the original version of my previous post.

Given this, I have substantially revised my previous post… I blew this one by misreading the historical evidence—I won’t let it happen again.”

You might take a lesson from that writer.

“As is DCSCA.”

Why are you referring to yourself in the third-person?

Are you off your meds again?

“Pay the $2 dbn.”

“Pay the $2, dbn.”

Get some treatment for your OCD.

Get some treatment for your OCD.