Chris I was in disbelief also but the gentleman I am referring to was a Rocket Scientist named Art Gussner. He was a patient of mine and we went with his family and took my family to watch the lauching of the Magellan which he designed and built for JPL. In the Cold War race to build the first rocketship to reach the moon was really a military/political exhibition to demonstrate the ability to to launch ICBM's. The U.S. and the USSR were in a race against each other to grab the top German rocket scientists following WWII.The Russians were far ahead of the U.S. in rocket technology. Kennedy's commitment to the space program along with German rocket scientists is the only reason we succeeded.One would think that we could look at our SaturnV's and reverse engineer but apparently it is way more complex than that.Essentially the technology to launch a rocket to the moon died with those rocket scientists.Art stated simply that in the year 1989 the U.S.no longer had the scientists and technological capacity to launch a capsule with a rocket. I took his educated opinion as truth.Still hard to fathom but I believed him.Remember this was in 1989 and maybe things have changed.
