What am I, chopped liver?
And for reference, the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft were built by McDonnell Aircraft Co, the Apollo Command Module was build by North American Aviation. It's contractors, all the way down.
We never went back because we lost the will. The technology was post dated and needed to be replaced. 3 options were presented to Nixon, the very expensive option, the not as expensive option, and the kinda cheap option. Nixon said #3, but half that price. That’s how we got the Space Shuttle. The replacement for the shuttle was supposed to be green lit by Reagan, that was the plan, it would have a 20 year useful life and they’d use basically all that 20 years to make the replacement. Nobody has green lit any replacement. Which is why we have no manned launch vehicles anymore. It’s really hard to go to the moon when you’re not even building launch vehicles.
As for 2 actually very very much yes. A smart phone today has multiple times more gigaflops of processing power than existed on the entire planet when the moon landings happened. We have super computers in our pocket and use them to send misspelled texts.
What am I, chopped liver?
And for reference, the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft were built by McDonnell Aircraft Co, the Apollo Command Module was build by North American Aviation. It's contractors, all the way down.
You need to read “One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission that Flew Us to the Moon” by Charles Fishman. Fascinating account about the entire process of the moon mission.
As for the computers, it tells how a bunch of middle-aged and older seamstresses SEWED metallic disks into fabric and connected them with conductors to create the programs for running the Command and Lunar Modules. One mistake, and you start over! No backspace key available... Those were the logic circuits. Not really software, more like firmware, I guess.
It is really a great book IMO. I was 9 when we landed and the moon shots got me into engineering. I worked on ICBM’s for a time as a young engineer.