[ 149 thousand clicks is a major change in the math of when to break orbit on the slingshot. And it’s actually about 1/3 of the distance, which is pretty significant. ]
NO, it is only 149 clicks, not 149,000 km....
149km no 149,000km.
The first probe was a failure because it could always be sabotaged later in the prehistory timeline.
Still a big change to the math. And I noticed you skipped right past how sending the team to build the rocket to put the probe on the moon would completely invalidate the point of sending a probe in the first place.
The first probe wasn’t a failure, it gave them a reason to think it was safe to send people back, that makes it a success. And the theory of the probe was to send it back to decide whether or not to send back people, since it initially goes back without people there’s nobody to sabotage it. Of course then you use that information to then send back people... that’s the fun of time travel anything you do in reaction to your results immediately invalidates your results. The uncertainty principle really comes into it’s own when you throw time travel into the mix.