# Feats equal to, or tougher, than landing men on the Moon **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 11, 2019, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912 "2019-07-11T16:36:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/21 "2019-07-12T07:16:46Z")
As a non-medical person I would suggest the development of successful and reliable [heart transplantation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_transplantation). A more dispersed effort across nations, but maybe equal stakes and sense of triumph, and possibly something like the same complexity of task. I know there was much experimenting and attempts along the way, and much was learned, but the actual achievement of it [if Christiaan Barnard’s 18 day survival for a patient in 1967 can be counted as ‘the one’] showed it could be done, and now is well understood. Would be interested in others’ views but, to me part of the equivalence with the first moon landing comes from how we think about the balancing of personal risk versus collective outcome. On the operating table someone was always odds-on to be dead during or straight after the ops. Their death could only have been justified if the outcome was of a commensurately higher and nobler purpose. The deaths of the Apollo 1 astronauts were only acceptable to the US public because of the higher [symbolic] purpose of conquering space. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/22 "2019-07-12T13:43:50Z")
I know I’m going to get blasted for this one, but here goes: the planning and execution of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Librarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_librarian/32/402_2.png) [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/23 "2019-07-12T13:52:09Z")
If we go by number of people involved or moving parts: You can order a phone today and snap a picture with it and publish it to the world tomorrow. The logistics, development, research, maintenance, production needed to make all of that possible completely dwarves the moon landings. It lack the “Because we can” cool factor though. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/24 "2019-07-12T14:21:14Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > I know I’m going to get blasted for this one, but here goes: the planning and execution of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Blasting away… The 9/11 attacks were a couple of orders of magnitude less impressive than the moon landings. The 9/11 attacks involved less than 100 people and required no new invention or even much use of existing technology. I would suggest: The Manhattan Project The D-Day landings Reaching the South Pole in 1909 ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/25 "2019-07-12T14:23:01Z")
Wanting to beat the USSR and to fulfill the Kennedy goal did a lot to motivate NASA and the US in general to go to the Moon. For the Manhattan project they wanted to beat Germany to getting the bomb. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/26 "2019-07-12T15:35:26Z")
The feats that still blow my mind are the construction of the Pyramids and the Suez Canal, not only for the size of the project, but how long ago they were undertaken. For example, just think about how we are closer in time to Cleopatra than she was to the building of the Great Pyramid. Or how the Panama Canal is roughly half the length of the Suez Canal overall, but the Suez was completed half a century earlier. And, of course, both were accomplished at very great human cost. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/27 "2019-07-12T15:36:11Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But you’re assuming that the chances of death on each mountain are uncorrelated: That each time you climb, you roll the dice to see if you die. In actuality, though, some people are better at surviving low-oxygen conditions than others. It could be that the ones that die are just the ones who are really bad at tolerating low oxygen, and were guaranteed to die on any summit, and the ones who survived are good enough at it that they’d be guaranteed to survive every time. More likely, it’s some combination, but it’s still more likely that someone who survived it once can do so again. This may be true, but you seem to be ignoring the fact that the 8000m peaks are by no means similar in climbing difficulty. Everest is one of the easy ones. [List of death rates on all 8000m peaks.](https://marvelmountain.com/mountain-death-rate/) Annapurna kills 38% of _all_ attempts, and K2 and Nanga Parbat aren’t all that far behind. I doubt there are enough attempts on these peaks with no supplemental oxygen to provide a statistically significant death rate, but it would only be higher. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/28 "2019-07-12T15:52:57Z")
How about the Lewis and Clark expedition? Big project of exploration funded by the government, significant personal risk by the parties involved, massive impact on the American psyche. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/29 "2019-07-12T15:55:52Z")
There was a “pyramid” aspect of the project. The base was a immense amount of funding. (On the scale of $400 billion in today’s money.) Then there were all the factory workers, etc. Then more specialized people like engineers, then rocket designers and NASA honchos. Then the astronaut corp. Then the 3 that were sent on Apollo 11. Just in terms of money alone, I know of nothing that comes remotely close to such a limited goal project. Never mind the vast number of people behind it. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/30 "2019-07-12T18:02:14Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > [List of death rates on all 8000m peaks.](https://marvelmountain.com/mountain-death-rate/) Interesting. If you multiply the chance of surviving each of these 14 mountains, the resulting probability of surviving them all is around 14%. This of course assumes that in each case you need just one attempt - most unlikely. I haven’t been able to find information on the success / attempt ratio for these mountains, but I know it is notably low for the tough ones. Among the many uncertainties, weather is a big one. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/31 "2019-07-12T18:02:27Z")
Since this thread seems to have gone beyond the “getting humans somewhere” requirement of the OP, I would submit that, in terms of significance, the Human Genome project will probably have an order of magnitude greater effect on humanity than getting people to the moon. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/32 "2019-07-12T18:07:57Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I’ve read, for instance, that fewer men have scuba’d to 600 feet or deeper in the ocean without the aid of a pressurized body suit than the number of men (12) who have been on the Moon. (Not sure about the exact ocean depth but it was some stat like that) Man has landed on the moon six times and spent almost 300 hours on the moons surface (not all EVA). Yet man has visited the deepest part of the worlds oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana’s Trench, just once. In 1960. For 20 minutes. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlecCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SmartAlecCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlecCat)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/33 "2019-07-12T18:38:27Z")
Sequencing the human genome. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlecCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SmartAlecCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlecCat)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/34 "2019-07-12T18:40:31Z")
Discovery of the Higgs boson. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/35 "2019-07-12T18:47:14Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > I know I’m going to get blasted for this one, but here goes: the planning and execution of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As \*\*zimaane \*\*points out, this wasn’t that hard. It merely involved infiltrating some terrorists into America, getting them some training in airplanes and flight simulators, avoiding their true intentions being discovered, then carrying out the hijackings in a pre-9/11, relaxed airport-security era. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/36 "2019-07-12T18:49:33Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Man has landed on the moon six times and spent almost 300 hours on the moons surface (not all EVA). Yet man has visited the deepest part of the worlds oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana’s Trench, just once. In 1960. For 20 minutes. Twice, technically - James Cameron did it again many years later on a solo dive of his own. But yeah, still much less time spent by humanity in that place than on the Moon. ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/37 "2019-07-12T19:10:13Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Or how the Panama Canal is roughly half the length of the Suez Canal overall, but the Suez was completed half a century earlier. The Suez was built through flat desert, while the Panama Canal was built through a mountainous stretch of rainforest. The Panama Canal was both significantly more dangerous to the lives of its workers, and a vastly greater engineering feat, requiring the construction of an artificial lake and the implementation of a series of locks to raise and lower the huge container ships that pass through it. The Suez Canal essentially was just digging a massively long ditch. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/38 "2019-07-12T19:31:01Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Man has landed on the moon six times and spent almost 300 hours on the moons surface (not all EVA). Yet man has visited the deepest part of the worlds oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana’s Trench, just once. In 1960. For 20 minutes. Aren’t you supposed to triple post that? An SDMB meme is just not the same with a single post. As far as the question in this thread, how about the landing of men on the Sun? It was going to be really hard until someone discovered the trick. (And everyone now knows the trick, so I’m not going to repeat it here.) ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/39 "2019-07-12T19:37:14Z")
The Glomar Explorer finding, then working on a submarine sunk 5,000+ meters down below. At that depth, pressure is close to 500 times atmo. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2019, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912/40 "2019-07-13T02:15:35Z")
More men have walked on the moon than have completed a non-stop single-handed circumnavigation sailing of the globe via the harder westward route. The sailing feat has only been completed by five people - one of whom, [Jon Sanders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Sanders) of Australia, completed the feat twice during a trip that included two sailing westward circumnavigations and a third via the eastward route. A solo non-stop sailing circumnavigations by either route has been completed by only 25 people - far fewer than the 227 people (as of July 27, 2017 per Wikipedia) who have visited the International Space Station. Only 4 people have ever completed more than one solo non-stop sailing circumnavigation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/feats-equal-to-or-tougher-than-landing-men-on-the-moon/836912.md?page=3)