We have years of history to prove it now--that the so-called moon landings in the early 1970's never happened.
"
Never". Uh,
huh. Fascinating!
There are a lot of advanced countries that should have the technology to do so (remember the Apollo computer was less powerful than most people's digital watches today).
Arguing
computing power can leave readers in the weeds in a way that's not all that different from "hard science": We can argue
cycle-time,
pipeline stages,
cache, installable vs. installed memory, &c.
Notwithstanding the apple-Computer design philosophy that made Steve Wozniak a zillionaire recluse, one can't replace all hardware in any given project with microprocessors and software. And one does need to arrange for all the
software to be written (and tested and controlled). To get 3 U.S. astronauts to the Moon--and "return them safely to Earth"--required lots of hardware, much of it
ad hoc, and some of it just plain
huge: The Saturn V with all its stages, plus the manned modules for the lunar landing, was
363 ft. tall.
Money is required not only to build the rockets and manned modules, but also their unit-testing, assembly, and launching sites. As various U.S. national politicians were appalled to realize after Pres. John F. Kennedy caught the public imagination, the Moon Race cost a
huge amount of money annually, peaking at
$4.5G from the U.S. federal budget in 1966 (I infer multiplication by on the order of
6 for its equivalent
ca. 2019: $27G). Yet the 1st launch of a Saturn V wouldn't be until the next year (Nov. 1967).
Russia, Japan, China, Europe just for starters.
Let's appeal instead to
literature: Arthur Conan Doyle's character
Sherlock Holmes. I've read that the crucial factors for him in investigations were "motivation" and "opportunity".
"
Motivation" is similar to the Southern sporting notion of
"want to", which includes national budgetary priorities, which are political and social, and can also be military, e.g., reconstruction of civilian damage from war, subsidizing development of heavy industry, or stockpiling weapons.
"
Opportunity" is similar to the notion of
"can do", including national prosperity or its absence, avoidance of war, or collective technological advancement, e.g., membership in the "1st World", possession of
hard currency, and systematic international theft of superior technology.
Sooo, which of those countries or alliances had
both the
motivation and
opportunity to send men or women to set foot on the Moon, given that the U.S.A. had already done so
6 times,
hmmm?