The most visible legacy of the Apollo program comes from the pioneering brilliance of the NASA scientists and engineers who figured out how to successfully accomplish the then-unimaginable — in less than a decade.
Gomez is a physicist, and his enthusiastic explanation of the breakthrough technology used in Apollo missions is best offered to other scientists who have an ear for such detail. In short, the new and then-somewhat cumbersome technology involving "integrated circuits" was the beginning of conveniences we now take for granted.
"One concrete thing we live with every day is the technology we carry in our pockets — smart phones and tablets — and it has changed our entire culture, the way we relate to each other," Gomez said.
"I appreciate my cell phone very much, and chances are, if it weren't for the Apollo (technological breakthroughs), we would have (eventually) developed something like that," he said. "But it really helped jump-start an entire industry, and it is a result of the huge technology investment that went into developing the Apollo program that we have this."
Cline said it was not only the technology that came from the space program, but its rapid development due to President Kennedy's determination to put American astronauts on the moon within a decade.
"Most people understand the many technological advances that came from the U.S. space program and how they impact our daily lives: computer technology, cell phones, advanced networking, GPS, satellite communications and so forth," Cline said. "What the Apollo program did was to greatly accelerate the development of that technology.
"The goal of putting a man on the moon in less than 10 years compressed what might normally have been done in 20, 30 or even 40 years into less than a decade," Cline said. "And that formed the basis for the technological explosion in the '70s, '80s and '90s that is unprecedented in human history."
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/local/2014/07/17/legacies-apollo-years-moon-landing/12802617/
