It's easy to lose track of just what capabilities we had when in terms of things like communications or weather forecasting. In 1957 of course, nothing space based. By 1980, global weather coverage, LANDSAT, TV broadcasts (when did INMARSAT phones come on line)?

But a lot of that showed up in the 1970s. Hell, NASA was relying on ground stations for Shuttle missions well into the 1980s until the whole TDRS constellation was up.

In 1969, there's a lot that we simply didn't have yet. My gut guess would have been that we had global geosync coverage by then, but as I think through the chronology, yeah, that's not right, we didn't. And while I knew about the DMSP program, I didn't realize it was so highly classified at the time -- I'd have assumed that NASA had ready access to DMSP data for recovery operations.

Heck, I can't even believe going hiking in unfamiliar places with no cell phone, GPS, or Google Earth maps -- only some notes I furtively jotted out of a guidebook in a book store -- just 15 years ago. That sounds crazy!

Pretty amazing that we pulled off going to the Moon with the technology of the time. Those were some dedicated and brave guys.