On: Science fiction and the death of the sun

[generalizations]

Except, Luna 9 was soft landing attempt no. 12 - the point is the humans pulled it off on landing attempt no. 1.

[ivandenysov → generalizations]

Counter point: first unmanned US soft landing attempt succeeded 3 years before first manned attempt. Surveyor 1 - 1966 Apollo 11 - 1969. I bet that NASA learned a lot from 7 unmanned Surveyor missions and that contributed to the success of Apollo 11.