![]() That's a hard enough problem that, even though the physics was well understood, they didn't really see the issues until they actually tried it. The new method required being good at approaching and docking with another spacecraft. If we had stuck with the giant lander we would never have been ready in time. The trick ended up being to only send down a little bug, and even leave part of that behind on the moon. When you run the numbers on that, you end up with a pretty big lander requiring a lot of fuel, and a huge launcher to send it on its way much larger than Saturn. Before Apollo, everyone thought we would send the top of a multi-stage rocket to the moon, it would land on its tail and launch again to return to earth. However, there are some good examples of challenging problems that had to be solved. And, if you doubted how hard it was, people can point out that no one has done it again in more than fifty years. The "big deal", in the mind of the world, was just that an obviously very hard thing was accomplished. There was no one breakthrough that made it possible.
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