But my hardware man-crushes are okay

What's this, you say? A new documentary about the Apollo Program? This presents a dilemma. Either stop mocking (and applauding the mockery of) Robert Kaplan for his sloppy man-love for the B2 bomber, or be accused of rank hypocrisy for my own drooling, unthinking love of absurdly expensive toys.

Hypocrisy it is then! In my defense, the Saturn V was one of the few rockets at the time not originally intended for nuclear weapons delivery. Apollo was one of the few occasions where a large number of engineers in the US got paid well to develop systems that were never intended to kill people. The engineers a companies like Grumman, North American, and others jumped at the opportunity, just for once in the Cold War, to do something for their country that wouldn't mean a smoking crater somewhere in Asia. For an excellent read on the engineers who sent men to the moon, take a look at Angle of Attack by Mike Gray.