Thread by @cfishman

Going to the Moon was the hardest thing humans ever did. How can we say that?

I ran the numbers.

Total hours of Apollo spaceflight: 2,502
(100 days)

Total hours of work on Earth for each 1 hour of Apollo spaceflight: 1 million

fastcompany.com/90364565/going…

2/ That's a mind-boggling ratio.

--> 1 hour of Apollo spaceflight
--> 1 million hours of work on Earth

What's 1 million hours of work?

A typical American works 100,000 hours in a lifetime (2,000 hours a year for 50 years).

--> 1 hour of spaceflight
--> 10 lifetimes of work

3/ Every hour of flight to the Moon in the 1960s required the equivalent of 10 entire lives of work.

Imagine being able to do something for 1 hour that 10 people had spent their entire lives getting you ready to do.

Then the 2nd hour came along. 10 more people's entire lives…

4/ That was Apollo.

That's the submerged part of the story. We have — rightly — paid a lot of attention to the astronauts.

But the intensity and innovation was in labs & rocket centers, engineering groups & factories across the US.

#Apollo51

fastcompany.com/90364565/going…

5/ You can get a taste of that from my series, '50 Days to the Moon,' about the incredible effort, innovation and quirky moments that getting to the Moon required.

Collected here:

fastcompany.com/section/50-day…

6/ The whole story, of course, in 'One Giant Leap.'

It's an absorbing and inspiring tale for our pandemic summer. We can solve our problems. We can work together.

amazon.com/One-Giant-Leap…