Lunar Rover

[Zad]

Even now, ideas come from people, not from numbers. Good engineers (in fact many non-good ones too) can work out whether concepts are feasible using ballpark numbers. So long as your estimations are in the correct order of magnitude and the assumptions are sound, the number that pops out at the end of it all is going to be close enough to give you an idea of whether something is feasible.

Any idiot can make a CAD (or physical) model spit out some numbers, but it takes an experienced and intelligent person to tell you what they mean, and why.

By the way, this is what cutting edge computer graphics looked like in 1972. http://vimeo.com/16292363