That 3rd stage vehicle was some piece of work, eh? I bet we can't construct anything like that right now.

Maybe, but it'd cost ya.

Unmanned soft-landing on the moon was possible. Remember the Surveyors. But of course the Surveyors didn't always work. Unmanned pinpoint landing is even harder. Now try it with a vehicle the size and complexity of the proposal. Sample-return, deploys various precision-aligned equipment, and plays a two-hour (or 24-hour, for the J-mission) prerecorded EVA video. Heaven help us if the VCR jams up there.

And who built this thing? The original argument was that NASA and its contractors were technically inept and managerially lackadaisical. Yet they come up with this miraculous piece of equipment to do all this stuff by automation and/or remote control. Why not just put a couple of pilots on the dang thing in order to simplify its design, and call it a lunar module?