You can't even send astronauts into low earth orbit nearly 40 years later without killing several of them - what is it now? 17 deaths or something?

Going yet you believe 12 were sent with 1960's technology to the moon, to walk around, play golf and drive cars up there and delivered them back safely to the Earth???

You make it sound like it is a lot harder to go to moon than into low earth orbit. I doubt it. The moon isn't really that far. Also, most of the gravity energy is already overcome when you get to earth orbit, and it doesn't take a lot more energy to get to moon. Then once there, all you have to do is have a craft like lunar module which is just strong enough to maneuver in the moon's gravity, which is weak. Taking off the moon will be also easy, and then returning the command module to earth is essentially like going down hill.

Carl Sagan - America's most famous astronomer - never promoted the lie in his lifetime and in one of his last interviews stated that the Apollo program was just about intimidating other nations and beating the Russians, just falling short of stating it was a cold war exercise lest he be demonised by brainwashed fanatics like yourselves.

Early in his career, he didn't like the idea of manned missions because he felt unmanned probes could do the science better and save money. He felt manned missions were political. But then after Apollo 17 landed, he was against stopping the Apollo missions, because he felt they were now inspiring people . Late in life, he became critical of Shuttle because it was boring. So you're only looking at half of the story.

Later on in the same interview he stated that NASA's greatest achievements were the Viking missions to Mars.

This is logical that he would say that. Those of us old enough to remember him as a Viking project scientist going on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson remember his beaming smile and youthful good looks. Remember, he was initially against Apollo so now, in 1976 , after they cancelled it, he was disillusioned by NASA's lack of vision and he reverted back to his current project.

In 1994 NASA's chief administrator admitted/let slip in a British TV interview that no astronaut can travel above 400 miles until it can be figured out how to protect them from lethal cosmic radiation

The command module and lunar module were made with a light-element skin that shielded them from the radiation . Remember, thicknesses of materials absorb radiation to certain percentages. The astronomers figured out how much and what types of radiations would be encountered during the flight, how long the exposure; and gave the problem to the people designing the craft and spacesuits. They figured out the correct materials and thicknesses. Now, they probably had some radiation dose, but not so much it couldn't be repaired by normal healing.