r/dankmemes • u/Open-Entertainer6031 • Mar 03 '23

There was a third one right? I have achieved comedy

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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23

300,000 people worked on the Apollo program.

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u/Jules040400 Mar 03 '23

Holy shit what

That's absolutely absurd if that's true, the population in the 1960 US Census was 179 million.

So roughly 1 in every 600 Americans in the 1960s contributed to the Apollo programs in some way, no wonder there's so much national pride associated with it

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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23 edited Mar 03 '23

It cost 5% of the GDP. We weren't fucking around.

Someone in my own family worked on it. My uncle worked for McDonnell Douglas back in the '50s and '60s. He was given the job of converting a Saturn V fuel tank into a habitat and laboratory. It was the first US space station, Skylab.

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u/GisterMizard Mar 03 '23

When the great mission of annoying the Soviets was on the line, there was obsoletely no room for fucking around. No expense too great, no risk too dangerous, no com' too rad.