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Which will be looked back on as the greater feat, in the grand scheme of humanity?

I can see arguments for both sides: the Moon was the first-ever space expedition to a place beyond earth. Hard to ignore the first time something like that ever happened.

But from a technical sense, Mars is obviously much more challenging, and it's the first time we'll ever land on another planet, not just a moon. We'll also have much greater technological capabilities, giving people back on earth a closer connection to the experience.

What do you think?

MOON71.4%
MARS28.6%
7 votes \ poll ended

Considering that software engineering did not exist in the 60s (Margaret Hamilton invented the term "software engineering" [0]) and how little computational resources where available back then, I picked "Moon".

the Apollo Guidance Computer, which weighed 70 pounds, had only 36K of RAM and 2K of ROM. But it was able to guide 27 men to the moon’s orbit and bring them back safely.

-- https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/the_computer_that_took_man_to_the_moon

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)

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How do we know that chemical rockets are the only way to reach the cosmos?

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interesting question.. I guess we don’t know

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We all stand on the shoulders of giants. MOON. We took that data and used it to help land things on Mars!

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Good take

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did we actually land on mars?

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there seems to be an overwhelming amount of evidence suggesting we didn't. this also seems to be the case with most of these national historical events. the mars rabbit hole leads to some quite interesting connections.

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