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Apollo Project - Going to the Moon, AND    coming back from the Moon

Going to the Moon was a lot of work.  Saturn V rocket (left) was as tall as 36-story building, weighed about 3,000 tons.  A man was drawn in the drawing to show how big it was. 

Coming back from the Moon did not require hardware of that magnitude.  Lunar Module (right) orbited the Moon, landed the Moon, and took off again to return to the space.

Lifting stuff off the Moon is not very hard.  There is no atmosphere, so there is no drag or aero-heating.  Also, velocity required to get off the Moon is 2.4 km/sec, compared to 11.2 km/sec to get off the Earth.  Even without consideration to the atmospheric effect, it requires only about 1/20th of energy to launch spacecraft from the Moon, compared to launching from the Earth.

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