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Comment by prottog | Hacker News Reader

You might have a point about the semiconductors involved (that back in the 70s the engineering ability just wasn't there), but as a counterpoint, almost anything can be manufactured given an unlimited budget, like the moon landing programs had. We even turned lead (well, bismuth) into gold back in the 80s.

Making one of something where the cost is no object is almost always possible. Making millions at a commercially-viable cost is much more challenging.

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I always find the "unlimited budget" angle interesting.

The entire Apollo program had a budget of $165.5 billion (in 2021 dollars), over a 10 year program. $16.5 billion per year. It's a big number, but it's absolutely dwarfed by things like a $600bn military.

> The entire Apollo program had a budget of $165.5 billion (in 2021 dollars), over a 10 year program. $16.5 billion per year. It's a big number, but it's absolutely dwarfed by things like a $600bn military.

Apollo was actually pretty close to the same GDP share (2.5% of GDP annually) as the modern defense budget (3.1% of GDP).

Inflation-adjusted numbers ignore that we have more people and more value produced per capita now than in the 1960s.

Wasn't the military budget higher back then because of active wars? The Vietnam War was in full swing back then.

I don't have the numbers though.

> Wasn’t the military budget higher back then because of active wars?

Yes, the spending on the Apollo program is pretty close (as share of GDP) to the current military budget, not to the contemporary (1960s) military budget, which ranged from a 7.6-9.4% of GDP.

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