But they did it, and guess what- 4 decades later no one gives a damn about the money spent because adjusted to inflation and comparative to other pointless spending(wars) its the cost of chicken feed.
The whole point is stunt or other wise they achieved something through brute force. The point is we aren't even attempting a brute force solution.
But why should we try brute force solutions? I have much bigger dreams than 12 guys walking on the moon.
Routine daily commercial flights to orbit with reusable vehicles that fly many times in one week, NEO exploration, in situ resource usage. One day many of the people who comment on Hacker news can have visited space, some may even live and work there.
That requires longer and more many sided and organic development than a brute force government crash program. That just would not be good resource usage.
The whole point is stunt or other wise they achieved something through brute force. The point is we aren't even attempting a brute force solution.