The requirements for the manned mission to the moon are still an order of difficulty greater than the those carried out today either by the US, Soviet Union or the European Space Agency. The complexity of the maneuvers each space vehicle CSM and LEM had to perform would even task the control systems engineer today even with all the computational power available along with a much improved understanding of the software requirements and software tools available. As I described in the previous post, the failure of the Apollo project was due to the limitations of the 1960s technology. Digital Control systems theory for sampled embedded digital controllers were not sufficiently advanced at the time. This is evident in the recently released scientific Apollo papers published at the link on my previous post. During the 1960's computer technology improved exponentially with computers being developed by Eliot Automation for the British Aerospace Corporation TSR2 (1964-65) project being technology far in advance of the Apollo AGC. The Apollo computer specification was born out of the technology five years earlier. They were stuck with this computer because it was embedded completely into the Apollo system. By 1967-69 even commercially available PDPs were more computationally powerful. By the 1974 the HP65 hand held calculators were approaching the computational power of the Apollo AGC. The planetary space probes you mention which have successfully landing on mars etc were not manned, they did not have to return, they did not use star navigation because they did not have to return, they did not require a human life support system, they were designed in the 1970s, their trajectories were essentially ballistic because the Centre of Gravity is easier to define and a lot of them failed. All successful manned space vehicles have operated only in a ballistic Low Earth Orbit below the Van Allen radiation belt.

The comparison between the Concorde Project and the Apollo project was to show that highly complex projects take many years of in flight development testing working systems and finding where the maximums of the flight envelope are. The Apollo project was an order of magnitude more complex but apparently worked first time i.e. 5 million components worked in harmony first time. This has a very low order of engineering probability. Its a bit like building your own computer from the dozen or so parts i.e. motherboard, PSU etc then switching it on and viola, we have lift off!! We must also remember this is before the days of finite element analysis and engineering computer modeling. We must also remember that 5 contractors worked on the major sub assemblies. Even the management of the document control would have been a complete nightmare. This is why the engineers who turned up the voltage on the Apollo AGC probably did not know this would cause a disaster in a pure oxygen environment. I suspect the time constraints on the whole project (political pressure to beat the damned Russians to the moon before the end of the decade), the inevitable screw ups, poor communication between the contractors would have made the whole Apollo project unworkable.

The only aircraft I know off which could intercept a Concorde would be an English Electric (BAC) Lightning (1960s). The pilot of the SR-71 would still be sitting on the ground waiting for the refrigerator connected his space suit to kick in while the ground crew top up the fuel which had leaked out overnight. Official Secret - BAC Lightning versus Locheed SR71 race over the Atlantic - SR71 lost. Something to do with the in flight refueling. The Lightning was being refueled at 65,000 feet by an RAF Victor Tanker, the SR71 was being forced to refuel at 38,000 by a USAF KC135. Guess that made all the difference. Concorde required no in flight refueling as the rock stars sipped champagne at Mach 2.05.



Sorry just found this picture - Superb

NASA could have at least left some stars in the moon landing pictures. But I guess some smart nerdy navigator who has some knowledge of star navigation would have been able to work out where the moon shot pictures were actually taken from. Somewhere just north of Las Vegas maybe!! The computer program Starry Night Beginner is very useful. It allows you to calculate all the star positions at the time and location of the Apollo landings on the moon, maybe NASA can put the stars back.

There any many more anomalies in the NASA photographs, Cross hairs appearing behind equipment in the foreground, incorrect shadow angles (again can be computed using Starry Night Beginner),diverging shadows indicating a close by lighting source not one 93 million miles away, multiple lighting sources, lack of moon dust on the LEM leg pads, lack of blast crater under the rocket motor of the LEM, Flags waving in the wind (but no atmosphere), etc, etc

Hope this helps.