I happen to agree with the GP, and I've written tons of games in the past 40 years. Here's my Atari 2600 version of Lunar Lander:

http://www.pdroms.de/files/73/

Run it through an emulator like Stella to play.

I later ported the game to Flash, but it's not quite as fun as the 60Hz 2600 version. However, you can play it on a Wii! (Use S for thrust if you're on a PC.)

http://www.wiicade.com/gameDetail.aspx?gameID=692

Evidence is presented in courtrooms, not to journalists. Saying, "there's no evidence" is basically a fancy way of saying, "the court has not yet heard the case".

For now we have allegations. They will be proven or disproven in court.

FTFA: "The suit alleges white officers post on and moderate the privately operated site, Domelights.com, both on and off the job."

That was one variation of the term "computer". But as my old fashioned flight computer can attest to, slide rules were often referred to as computers as well.

It's interesting listening to some of the vets from WWII. They'll often talk about their "trajectory computers" or their "bombing computers" or their "landing computers". To the modern ear, it sounds like they're talking about early electronic machines. Yet these references are just specialized slide rules used to "compute" results for a set of measurable inputs.

The Saturn V could lift more than double the shuttle's cargo capacity

I addressed this above. The Shuttle Transport System has better power output, but it has to waste it on carrying a giant airplane into space. The Saturn V was less powerful, but far more flexible. Put whatever you want on top and it gets to space. That often meant the Apollo capsule/command module/lander/moon equipment combo with sufficient velocity to make lunar orbit, but also occasionally meant a huge hulk of steel and solar panels like SkyLab.

The Saturn V boosters were detuned as well.

I'm not talking about detuning. I'm talking about reducing engine output once maximum dynamic pressure is reached. If the SRBs maintained maximum thrust, they'd push the shuttle beyond its structural limits.

From Wikipedia:

The propellant is an 11-point star-shaped perforation in the forward motor segment and a double-truncated-cone perforation in each of the aft segments and aft closure. This configuration provides high thrust at ignition and then reduces the thrust by approximately a third 50 seconds after lift-off to avoid overstressing the vehicle during maximum dynamic pressure (Max Q).

What you're referring to is the resonance problems inherent in the engine vibration of the F-1 engines. i.e. The "pogo" effect. As I recall, this issue is currently the biggest challenge facing the Ares I stack. The Space Shuttle was vulnerable to some pogo effect, but adding dampeners to the LOx fuel lines was sufficient to prevent the effect.

Pedantic nit: they used slide rules back then.

Yeah, except they often referred to them as "computers". At least until the "electronic" variety became popular. So shush, you. :-P

Replacing titanium structure with aluminum, for example.

Interesting. I would have pointed to the heat shield, instead. Carbon-carbon was nearly invincible and was used for the leading edges of the space shuttle. But as a cost savings measure, they came up with that screwy tile system instead. It saved a ton on development, but it cost them later on.

And oh man, did it ever cost them.

By artificial gravity, I assume you mean using rotation to produce centrifugal force?

Correct. While we usually think of "artificial gravity" as some sort of sci-fi graviton thingy, von Braun used to term to describe the effect of rotating wheel in space.

That means that to get a full G of apparent gravity, you need a station with a radius of nearly 225 meters. Obviously, you could probably make do with less than a full G.

The original proposal by von Braun and Willy Ley was a 3-deck, rotating wheel with a diameter of 76 meters. Rotation would have been 3 RPM to provide artificial gravity of 1/3 earth normal. Since the effects of weightlessness were not known at the time, I believe von Braun intended the gravity to make the station more operationally efficient rather than meet the health needs of the crew.

I just don't see that being likely until we have a more efficient way than rockets to get material into space

You have to remember that they had the power of the Saturn V at their disposal. No weight was too heavy! No craft too large! And with the Nova drawings on the board, it was only a matter of time before mankind was the master of his solar system!

Of course, the fact that NASA was spending a fairly sizable chunk of the GDP on space exploration was lost on these engineers. There was not going to be a Nova, the Saturn V was seen as too expensive, and their ideas for a space station were simply too grand.

First, your numbers for the shuttle are flat out wrong. You forgot to account for the thrust from the SRBs. Second, your numbers for the SatV are missing. Third, the F-1 and the SSMEs are not comparable. The F-1 == SRB and the SSME == J2. Look them both up and you'll find that the shuttle is WAY more powerful on a per-engine basis.

Here are some corrected numbers:

Saturn V

Thrust: 34.02 MN
Mass: 3,038,500 kg
Thrust to weight ratio: 11.19:1

Shuttle

Thrust: 30.45MN
Mass: 2,030,000 kg
Thrust to weight ratio: 15:1

As you can see, the shuttle has 34% more power for its weight than the Saturn V. This is more than sufficient to accomplish the liftoff goals. The SRBs are actually shaped internally to REDUCE thrust during flight to prevent overstressing of the Shuttle hardware. The idea is to get up to Max-Q as quickly and smoothly as possible, then throttle back until the thickest part of the atmosphere is cleared.

There's a reason why the cosmonauts always like hitching a ride on the shuttle. As launch vehicles go, it's a really nice ride both on the way up and on the way down. ;-)

Compare apples to apples, please. The SSMEs are analogous to the J-2. (SSMEs are more powerful, BTW.) The F-1 analog is the SRB engines.

If you want to get off the ground in a hurry, the SRBs will happily flatten you to a pancake. In comparison, the Saturn V barely lumbered off the pad.

It's not ironic at all. NASA made an economic misstep by developing the Shuttle. The economics of launch vehicles favor the inline stack with smaller boosters for man-rated vehicles and larger boosters for cargo. Ne'er the two shall meet.

In absence of a clear need for a space station as a rendezvous point, taking a step backwards to more sophisticated capsules is how you get back on track for economic success.

What if Kennedy had set a lesser goal, such as orbiting the moon?

There's no tangible goal to take to the people there. What do you say? "Ha! We circled a man around the moon first!"? Doesn't hold much punch.

Do you remember who the first man was to orbit the earth? The vast majority of people wouldn't be able to answer. Some might answer "John Glenn". Only a small fraction of a percent of people would correctly answer Yuri Gagarin.

Do you remember who first set foot on the moon? Do you remember what his first words were? The fact that I don't have to answer either question speaks for itself.

8) SALT II would have long been abandoned and Earth would be surrounded by nuke armed stations.
9) No Cruise missiles. Why build a Mosquito when an Elephant would be cheaper.

Read up on the Revolt of the Admirals sometime. There's a good reason why we have cruise missiles and not nukes. It's not for want of orbital platforms.

4) No Space Shuttle. Rockets all the way. (Why mess with something that works)

We would have a space shuttle. It simply wouldn't be the "jack of all trades, master of none" we got.

The space shuttle was supposed to be a lightweight launch craft for transporting people to/from LEO where they could rendezvous with a space station and take a transport to a location like the moon. Economically, it made a lot of sense. It would have been fairly simple, cheap to operate, and with fewer disposable parts than the Saturn V. (Which basically throws away millions of pounds of hardware to return barely a few tons of mass. Very wasteful.)

So what went wrong?

Obviously, the same politics that killed the moon program. Nixon told NASA that they could have one launch vehicle, and the Saturn V was too expensive to be "it". Oh, and they needed to meet the military's needs for a launch vehicle as well, because the Titan rockets were also too expensive.

NASA got out their abacuses, ran some numbers, decided that the shuttle was key to a future space station, and committed to producing a super-shuttle that could be all things to all people. After all, they had the technology, right? Right?

Well, sort of. The engineers did an amazing job of producing the most sophisticated piece of space equipment ever designed. The power curves were incredible and the engines left the Saturn V in the dust. Only problem: It was a hellva lot of mass to send up and bring back, leaving little room for cargo. Worse yet, it was so complex that maintenance costs were through the roof. In the end, it would have been cheaper to continue operating the Saturn V with the economics of scale resulting in MORE cost reductions than the Shuttle ever realized!

What I'm getting at is that if we're going to play along with this dream-world where politics don't kill off programs, we'd have the Saturn V, the space shuttle, the space station (with artificial gravity!), and transport tugs originally envisioned by NASA. Because all those pieces have to fit together to make this mythical lunar base of 5,000 people possible.

Back here in reality, all those ideas were doomed from the beginning. The politicians only ever supported the space program to combat the USSR. By the 1970's, the Soviet Union had already collapsed. They were just coasting on momentum from there on out. That's why (save for a push by Regan to push the USSR to the brink of bankruptcy) the space program never recovered. There was no political need. And anyone who knows anything about politics knows that there has to be a need commiserate with size of the solution before there will be a large commitment. Hopes, dreams, and peaceful exploration ala Star Trek just don't cut it. :-(

No offense, but that's exactly the type of bullshit Microsoft wants you to believe. They've implemented some of the CSS stuff, but they're a LONG way from meeting a standard even as simple as FF1.5.

Call me when IE's DOM support leaves the DOM1 standard and moves on to the DECADE OLD DOM2 support. Then we'll talk.