I think the German V2 rockets were not all that far away from designing a rocket capable of going to the moon.
To me the most amazing thing about the moon landing was that we could watch it happening on TV.
Yep, that was really cool. I think I was 6 or 7 when we first landed on the moon. I remember watching it on a black and white TV with rabbit ears. Reception wasn't that great (by today's standards) but good enough to watch.
When you consider there's more 10x-100x more technology in a smartphone than we used to put a man on the moon, it was really an incredible accomplishment. Those guys were really risking their lives, nothing was guaranteed -- they went knowing it was within the realm of possibility that they might not make it back.
And yet they went, and they came back. As I think about it, it's almost like yesterday I was sitting on the floor in front of the TV with my sister and my parents watching on the TV, waiting for the delay in communications to pass to hear what was said next.
That was an incredible time in our history. Even with all the technology we have today, it feels like innovation is dead. Getting to the moon was a quantum leap in technology. So were PC's when they were first invented. Everything else since then has been nothing more than newer/faster iterations of technology that already existed.
I hope we're on the verge of the next quantum leap in technology ...
Of course, they filmed it in a studio! lol