One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

On the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo moon landings, we welcomed New-York Times Best Selling Author Charles Fishman (@cfishman), who wrote the book 'One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission that flew us to the moon’ (https://www.amazon.com/One-Giant-Leap-Untold-Story/dp/1501106295/). Follow our host Waheed Rahman (@iwaheedo) for more updates on tech and civilization.

We talk about:

  • the factors that led to the success of one of the largest government-funded deep-science technology projects.
  • spinoff technologies and effects of Apollo on hardware and software we do today
  • communist management style vs democratic leadership
  • privatisation of space economy, decreasing costs, similarities to internet economy and opportunity for emerging market countries.
  • climate change, poverty vs space investment priorities?

Here are the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players, you should be able to click the timestamp for the episode.

(00:00) - Intro

(09:08) - Key factors that made a major technology project like Apollo successful

(17:25) Evolution of Soviet centralized vs American decentralized management systems

(23:12) - Apollos systemic impact on software

(28:35) - Apollo as a global trust-building exercise for software

(29:02) - Some of the defining spinoff technologies from Apollo

(37:52) - How the context of 50s and 60s defined America and the Apollo mission

(43:03) - Is space travel affordable?

(44:39) - Investing in space technologies vs investing in climate change and poverty

(47:06) - How does space science reinforce climate science?

(48:00) - Is there a new space race on the horizon?

(53:29) - Opportunities for developing nations in the space domain

(58:02) - Space applications within the local context

(64:24) - Outro