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Took a trip to the Kennedy Space Center and the Saturn V display got me thinking
I was there last month and the sheer size of the rocket is amazing, but the whole 'we lost the technology' line they give about the Apollo program doesn't sit right with me. They say we can't rebuild the F-1 engines exactly, but with modern computers and materials, that feels like a choice, not a lost secret. Has anyone else looked into the real reasons we moved on from that design?
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the_val12d ago
Totally agree, it's not lost like the recipe for Greek fire. We chose to stop making them and the factories got torn down. The real story is that those old engines were crazy expensive and complex to build by hand. Today we'd design something simpler and cheaper from the start, probably using 3D printing. So calling it "lost technology" is just a catchy museum line, right?
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