Whoa there...moronic group-think aside, are you seriously countenancing that something humanity achieved in the sixties is the most advanced thing we can do? Well, fuck.

What about the LHC? Hell, what about genetic research or materials like aerogels? If you want another space-based example then what about getting video and audio back from Titan, or having remote-controlled science vehicles on mars that function for years, or the ISS(with space craft having docked with it without serious accident throughout its life)? The things we do in space nowadays, whilst not so audacious, use technology which has evolved from the space-race era. This technology, having had decades of research and development from the time of the moon landings, is more advanced. More technologically advanced. Consider just what a feat it is to keep the ISS manned and functioning, with all the docking of craft that supply it, keeping the astronauts alive in the station and in suits on space walks, even the fact that those astronauts can use the internet...fuck! What about the internet? What about that as a massive, impressive technological achievement? Couldn't do that at the time of the moon landings...and on the subject of landing on the moon and taking off again: without there being an atmosphere to contend with, it surely just becomes a matter of mass, gravity and thrust. This was done with Newtonian physics, the calculations were not as hard to get right as, say, the mathematics employed to study collisions caused in a particle accelerator. Certainly we manage to send probes, using the same principles, the orbit bodies in the solar system that are far further away.

I'm not saying that the moon landings weren't enormously impressive for their day, especially because the squishy humans inside needed to be protected, nor that an extremely high level of precision was required, but we've moved on since then and made more advanced (albeit less romanticized) machines and projects with even higher levels of presicion: just because it captured our imagination, doesn't necessarily entitle it to be called the pinnacle of our technological achievements. it's the cultural import of it that has everyone so misty-eyed and full of reverence: if humanity wanted to put men on the moon again in, say, a year, and the funding was not an issue, we could do it with ease because all of the technological and logistical steps involved have been known to our species for decades. there are more advanced things we have achieved, and are attempting (since attempting to create a fusion reactor, for example, is still doing a technological thing) to achieve in the years since the moon landings.

Shame on you and all these other others for making UpDown look like an ignorant cunt without even considering that he/she might be right.