Book Quotes: Hornet Plus Three

From Hornet Plus Three: The Story of the Apollo 11 Recovery by Bob Fish:

One of the most fortuitous decisions made by NASA was to utilize passive water-based landings, unlike the Soviets....When all these things were considered, less rocket power was required to launch a water-landing craft into lunar orbit than a land-recovery design. In the end, the Soviet's most powerful rocket, the N1, simply never matured enough to complete a successful launch, while NASA's Saturn V put twelve Americans on the Moon's surface.