In article ,
Dav Vandenbroucke wrote:
On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 19:38:22 -0600, wrote:

I argue that the Germans could have done it with their 1940s technology.

This discussion immediately founders on what you mean by "technology."
Obviously, the Germans couldn't go to the moon using V-2s. At what
point does developing something better become new technology? This is
just a discussion about words.

I think a more interesting question might be: how many years of
dedicated R&D (i.e., spending a significant percentage of GNP) might
it have taken Germany to put a man on the moon (and preferrably get
him back)? I would personally ignore the adverse effects of allied
bombing raids in estimating such a figure :-)

In my opinion, if the answer is somewhere around "two years", then
they did more or less have the required technology at the time, it
just needed some adaptation. If the answer is "10-20 years" then they
did not. Of course, as you indicate, this is very much a subjective
thing.

It depends a lot on where you personally draw the line between a
"technology" and a "capability".

Cheers
Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
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