General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: My generation went to the moon. [View all]FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)Robots and reusable rockets require communications, sensors, and most of all high speed data processing.
The USSR program cost 5% of Apollo and returned probably 0.0001% of the results that was a bad deal.
You need high speed computing power for truly exploring robots. We are just now getting there. The reason Viking lander and Soviet moon lander didn't really do anything is that they didn't have the computing power.
We are just now getting to a point where computers are powerful enough. That's why you are seeing the technology such as reusable rockets now.
NASA had to use men, they couldn't have done the mission without them.
Happy to discuss this with you via messaging as I'm bit of a space buff and know a number of the engineers that worked on Apollo.