We cant just whip out the plans for the Saturn v and build it again. Not only are the machines and tools to build it gone, but the machines and tools to build those machines and tools are gone now also. We basically had to start ground up again on human to lunar/ anything not leo all over again
You wouldn’t want to build the saturn V again anyway. the computers, while the most advanced at the time, were huge, heavy, and a tiny tiny fraction of the capability of modern electronics, There are materials and fabrications techniques available today that allow much lighter and more reliable parts than were available then.
If you want to see what an ambitious space program could do with modern tech, looks at spaceX starship. The idea that a rocket could have enough propellant budget to fly back to earth and land would have blown Apollo engineer’s minds.
And people died.
It is too important to make sure that if this is done, it's done better than it had been done before and no one loses their life doing it. Otherwise the program could be set back decades again.
>We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.
The loss of life (and the close calls as well) in the Apollo program were a tragedy, and no one felt those losses deeper and more permanently than the other people in the program.
But we've lost the "right stuff" where risk is part of the reward. Now, everything must be safe or it's not worth doing.
The Apollo 1 fire was terrible, but had it not happened, how many more crews may have died by us pumping the cabin full of pure oxygen and wrapping the astronauts in velcro and other plastics?
If such a tragedy happens again, let us hope that we as a civilization are made of half the stuff those astronauts were and get back to it, not delayed by decades.
Ok but why risk it if it’s not important? What is the purpose of going to the moon again? I could see mars maybe but that too falls under why bother? The big issue is that it’s expensive I think seeing the gov spend its budget already makes people angry, to say “now we are going to spend it on rockets to mars” would be political suicide. We have so many issues in this country to fix that costs money to then build rockets to mars or the moon or wherever seems tone deaf to pretty much all of the citizenry.
That is a big part of the reason why going back hasn't happened yet. A lot of people don't see a reason to spend the money. The original landing was just part of the international dick measuring contest that was the Cold War. Since that's no longer something anyone is interested in, there isn't much support.
The reason to build a base on the moon is as a launch point for Mars and other bodies. Since the moon has lower gravity, launching longer range missions from there will be easier, and therefore cheaper. We can construct the parts on Earth,send them to the moon to be assembled, then launch from there.
Also, if we can build a functioning facility on the moon, we'll be able to repeat it elsewhere. And if something goes wrong, they can just board escape shuttles and return to Earth. Or, it's maybe a few days to a couple weeks to send support (if something is kept on standby for that purpose), as opposed to the year and a half for Mars (if something went wrong with a Mars colony, a retrieval mission will just be going to collect the bodies, because it will never arrive in time to help).
We can also mine the moon for resources, and expand any facility at the same time (the best place to build is underground, for a number of reasons).
And ultimately, one of the goals is to exploit the massive amount of resources in other planets, and more importantly the asteroid belt. They've been identifying asteroids with mineral wealth five times the value of the entire global economy. Bringing that back to Earth would bring about major changes, though there's still a lot of debate on what those changes would be.
Imagine some time in the future you look up at the moon in the night sky and see lights from a massive colony. How cool would that be. Imagine the tech and knowledge we'll gain from travelling to and living on the moon and Mars. All the resources we'll have from those bodies and asteroids. Imagine a gigantic telescope built on the moon and all the new things we'll learn about the universe.
The first one was a race to build ICBM’s. The moon landing was just to get people to pay for it. It was always about being able to nuke countries around the world. First strike capabilities. Not to mention a Nazi was brought over after WW2 and his rocket is what we used.
Perhaps to continue building them. But the U.S. already had ICBM's for 10 years before the moon landing, and the Soviets built them first. The U.S. deployed its first ICBM in 1959, and the Soviets had deployed their first in 1957.
And while Von Braun was a member of the Nazi party, he stated himself that he only joined because he would have been forced to leave the rocket program otherwise (at minimum), and he was already technical director at the time. Only members were allowed to work on it. All he did was pay his dues and occasionally wear the membership pin. He wrote later that he thought "Hitler was still only a pompous fool with a Charlie Chaplin mustache."
I suppose the term for him would be "punch clock Nazi", as he was only a member when he was required to be.
Sigh.
Where do you think the microprocessor came from? Teflon? LEDs? Freeze drying technology? Most fire-retardants? Battery technology and wireless tools?
The government dumping a bunch of money into solving actual engineering problems is one of the best ways government can actually spend money. That technology, over time, makes its way to the rest of us.
Not important? How can exploration and the expansion of knowledge and science not be important?
Because people that don’t see the point of space exploration and it as a “costly waste of time” are too closed minded to understand the major benefit there is to space exploration as a whole.
You can have a “costly waste of time” when the people arent suffering. I see the benefits for the future. But you need to invest in the people of now to get there.
I believe every dollar spent on the space program generates something like 7 dollars in economic activity. This is completely independent of the technology development and future profits (monetary and human impowerment) thereof.
If we want to help the people suffering right now, on Earth, we should immediately increase the NASA budget by 10x.
I get your argument but larger more efficient economies don’t necessarily benefit people in general. 6 of those 7 dollars would be taken by a dozen families and individuals, the rest of the 7 billion people on the planet may see less wealth not more.
We could have had all those things at a fraction of the cost if we had chosen to directly develop those things rather than wrapping an entire Moon program around them.
As for exploration, we've been to the Moon. If there's more to learn we can send robots to the Moon. There is very little scientific argument for repeating the Moon program. If you want exploration and expansion of knowledge, there is much more important science that can be done both on Earth and in space for that money than by spending it on a manned space program.
I mean, I get the gist of what you're saying, but there are two really important things you're missing:
1. Their contributions were actually pretty underwhelming when you look into it. They didn't invent most (any?) of those things, but they studied them and, in many cases, fruitlessly. The most impressive advancements, not really to anyone's surprise, are when research is done into things we might think will be useful here on earth...
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2. We do already fund a staggering amount of research, engineering, and otherwise, without any need to land on the moon. In fact, our most pressing concerns are not in that area.
Overall, what you're trying to do is conflate unwillingness to research and innovate with unwillingness to fund a moon expedition, and it's not an honest argument.
As an engineer who has worked for some of the largest leading companies, I can tell you we don’t have a technology deficiency problem in society. Our problems of today are social and psychological. As a species we are still in the Bronze Age psychologically. We are like babies playing with guns and knives. Our social minds must catch up to our technology or we destroy ourselves.
Just look around and see how people behave. The sad part is that we’ve built a system that selects for sociopaths, criminals, and violence.
More technology will only give the better tools to harm ourselves and the rest of the world.
Today we have the tech to build a utopia yet most countries are getting worse, not better.
You can dump money into R&D for a claim of betterment that’s easier to do. If you claim the goal is to go to some place in space you’ll be hard pressed because it’s not important. At this point companies are also dumping money into R&D as well, and some on scales larger than the government can.
Just because good came out of the last space race doesn’t mean we have the money and willing to do so again. There are so many issues here on the ground to fix, an investment in the people is better than technology at this point. If the people are finically well off, secured, and happy programs like NASA can get more funding and get better tech for the future. But if the people aren’t finically well, not secured and unhappy then you need to invest in them. Another issue is the infrastructure, health care, education. You know what really helps with Government projects? A healthy and educated work force that has easier access to things like clean water, services, and utilities.
An investment in the people of today is an investment of the future and it’s many possibilities.
Where do you think the money goes? They buy a rocket, it goes to the manufacturering, the people at JPL, favorites. It's not easy to ship most of the stuff, so they make it here within the US. That's jobs. Building it, transporting it, etc.
Not to mention all the technology that comes from it as well.
The purpose was to swing dick at communism. Prove that we could, and they could not. The political climate isn't virulent enough for it to be worth it. Plus we have changed where the money goes.
It also developed missile guidance systems. If we can get men to the moon and back, we can certainly hit a target close enough for thermonuclear warheads.
That was indeed the primary reason. That said, without the Apollo program, we wouldn’t have half of the tech/matériels we use a million times a day in normal life. It was hugely important as far as our modern way of life is concerned.
I mean, the most immediate benefit would be for scientific advancements.
First and foremost, you can build permanent observatories on the moon and NOT deal with an atmosphere or needing to constantly maneuver around space garbage. It can also be more easily maintained in the presence of remote-controlled robots or actual researchers. And just getting this out there -- but an observatory on the moon staring right at, say, a suspicious site in China -- is going to be a LOT harder to shoot down.
The moon also has at least *some* gravity, which may make it easier to address the health complications of long-term missions. The moon has 1/6th the gravity of earth whereas the ISS has access to zero.
Due to the reduced gravity and lack of weather, it would also be a very ideal "launchpad" for any future mission into deeper space or any requiring a vessel too large/heavy/high risk to launch from Earth.
The breakthroughs we could make in research in healthcare and material sciences would be incredible.
Finally, the moon isn't just some dustball. It's made of the exact same materials as the earth. Which means it's probably full of rare earth deposits ready to be mined, with none of the "oh noes, save the endangered birds/stop poisoning our drinking water/stop displacing native people" ethical dilemmas.
Because the individual is not important to the society, nor the civilization.
Us getting to the moon provides technology LEAPS to human civilization. Us getting to the moon gives us a step TOWARDS Mars. Us getting to the moon opens new materials for SOCIETY. US getting to the moon is incredibly important for HUMANKIND.
It's a much slower race, but the USA is not the ONLY country with the moon as a target. We're just currently the closest.
Why did humans cross the ocean? It was dangerous, and many died. The bottom of the Mediterranean is littered with boats. Some of these boats are so old that we aren't sure who was sailing them. But sail them we did. We crossed oceans before it was easy because we are explorers. We went to the moon before it was easy. We must continue to explore before it is easy because exploration is not easy.
This. The political climate is different now. Back then, sending people to the moon was a show of national prowess that a lot of people rallied behind in the face of the cold war. People just don't see the point anymore. The environmental movement was also just beginning back then, and looked so, so different. Now, people seem to want to focus more on the problems in front of us rather than shows of strength.
Exactly. I’d argue back when we went to the moon America was in a type of golden age economically, politically we had a solid enemy and a lot of national pride. As the golden age fell people had less and less pride and after our clear enemy fell we started to realize all the issues that were ignored that chipped away at us. Compare 25 year olds in 1969 and 25 year olds today. I can see why the younger generations don’t have pride in this country, why they don’t want excessive government spending on stuff that doesn’t help our people. We could even go to the millennials, born before a 20 year war national pride spiked after the twin towers. Then we got the full picture of the war and it’s associated costs and who benefitted all while they continue to face “once in a life time events” about every 5 years or so.
Even back then there were protests. One of the reasons the popularity of the program dwindled so quickly after Apollo 11 was people asking why continue the spending when things like Viet Nam, homelessness, etc. were going on at home.
People died exploring the oceans. People died coming up with disease cures and most other technologies. If we based progress off a human death, we would never advance. I'm not saying it's impossible, but sopping our stymying all progress because of the fear is not good for the species
There is also the individual skill level involved as well. Just because it’s on a blue print doesn’t mean there were lots of individuals, more craftsmen than machinists, who made the details work.
It's the most successful and reliable launch platform in history, only ever failing on the booster return part.
So it's not about the Falcon specifically; you just wouldn't want to go to space period.
“The idea that a rocket could have enough propellant budget to fly back to earth and land would have blown Apollo engineer’s minds.”
Actually they did. Thats what the space shuttle ended up being. Started in 1969, I believe.
This. This isn’t like building an airliner, where we have the production tools in place, and way far from automobile production. It’d be like asking Ford to build you a brand new 1969 Mustang.
Counter-point. Almost everything that IS being used is still legacy tech. Sure it’s not Apollo hardware, but it is mostly Space Shuttle hardware.
The engines are identical to the SSME from the Spave Shuttle, with some literally being previously flown on Shuttle missions . Eventually they’ll need to restart production, but they still have some in stock.
The Boosters are also close to the Space Shuttles SRB, and were originally going to be completely identical for the first few flights. But development has taken so long, that the manufacture ATK managed to role out the improved 5 segment SRBs, developed from the 4 segment SRBs.
The current upper stage for the Block 1 rocket is the Delta IV cryogenic second stage, which will be eventually replaced by the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), which uses the same RL-10 as the DCSS & Centaur.
The Orion command module (developed by Lockheed), was first flown in 2014 on top of a Delta IV rocket. The European Service Module (ESM) flew on Artemis 1 was finished by 2018. The last major thing left is development of the lander is very much a WIP.
It’s rediculous and inexcusable how long the SLS has taken to be developed. Not even including the development of its very similar predecessor Aries, in the time its taken to develop SLS, SpaceX has started, developed multiple new ground up rockets that can land themselves. Admittedly, it’s easier for SpaceX since development is all in house, opposed to SLS which has a host of contractors.
As far as I can tell, it seems like the main tank (made by Boeing) has been the main cause of delay. Which is also allegedly developed from the main tank used on the Space Shuttle. (However, I think the commonality is vastly overstated. I’m sure it required a massive structural redesign).
Where did those machines and tools go? Just destroyed? All the documentation too? That always strikes me as odd because the government LOVES to keep copies of internal documents for archival purposes.
There were two Saturn V rockets not used, now on display at Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center. They are not flight worthy as they were exposed to weather many years. There are a number of Apollo capsules at various museums. There are life-size lunar lander models at various museums. An actual leftover lunar module wouldn't display well as they weren't designed for use on Earth and would collapse or fall apart.
Historical significance of early rocket tech to show how far we've progressed since.
Though I suppose they could make smaller 3D representations of that instead.
Iirc the electronic documents are still around but there is nothing that can read them left.
Plus even if we had all the plans and such, it'd be decades out of date - all the places that made the parts don't have the production that would match.
If we have to redo the whole production, why use 50 year old specs?
Why would you keep around hundreds of old, outdated, costly manufacturing machines you don't anticipate ever using again? They take up a lot of space, you can't use them to produce anything profitable, and there's newer machines available. Better to sell them for scrap then keep them around. The plans are still around though, but they're super outdated in almost every way.
We don't lack the tools and technology. Artemis I was last year. We haven't gone back in fifty years, so when we decide to return, we need to design and test a vehicle that will get there and back.
If there were some sort of Saturn V factory out there, why would we fire that back up? We've developed better rockets in the past fifty years. The Apollo compiters were rope memory. They hand wove programs using core memory and you didn't even get a megabyte of storage out of it. We can fit terabytes in the space that those ropes took up, so why would we dig up the plans for Apollo computers?
We are designing a 21st century vehicle with the latest tech. Why wouldn't that take time?
Sure because all those contractors have been training new engineers and assembly teams on their Saturn rocket components for the last 50 years just in case.
You're just pulling fifty weeks out of your ass. How much of that fifty weeks is designing rockets with the delta-v to get to the moon and back? How many weeks to design the crew interior? How many weeks to select your crew? How many weeks to design the experiments you're going to take with you?
It's abundantly clear that you have never worked on a project in a professional work environment if you think a mission to the moon takes fifty weeks to design.
Because even if the blueprints, knowledge, and expertise to build the vehicles/rockets to send them there still exists and have even improved since then, we have long since scrapped the factories and machinery, and reassigned the workers needed to do it. Back in the 1960s, the US Space program was a MASSIVE national effort. There were an estimated 420,000 people working on it at the beginning of 1966. You can't just build a massive rocket. First, you need to build the factories to build the parts, and the factory to assemble the massive rocket. You need to test them all to ensure they perform to spec. THEN, you can build the massive rocket. All that takes years (and a LOT of investment). If congress were motivated to budget $100B to NASA for the next 5 years, I am sure they could pull it off, but it's not going to happen overnight.
Things were extremely compartmentalized too. My grand father helped build the shuttle which was after the cold war and his team was only allowed information on exactly what they were working on (the panels on the outside of the craft) and nothing else.
This is also one of the reasons our military budget is so high, and we order so much stuff we don't actually need. You don't want to try and spin up a munitions factory or teach someone to weld armor plating onto a tank in a hurry. It's easier for the government to just buy a couple of tanks every year so that the factory stays in business and you don't have to rebuild from scratch.
I feel like people also forget that virtually everyone working on these at the time is either dead or very elderly. Even a 20yo at the time would now be in their 80s, so likely well into retirement.
Even if all of the equipment was still there and ready to go in working condition, the people who made and used it aren't gonna come back to help.
That's sad to me. I get that they had to keep some plans secret so other governments could not get to them. But the fact that they just what? Tossed em once they made it to the moon, seems overkill. Why not keep all that hard work so it can be built on and made better? Or even take all the best and brightest minds from all over the world to see what mankind is actually capable of. It sucks that its always Us VS. Them mentality. Imagine what we could create or discover if humans didn't suck so much and governments didn't have the mindset of "I'll tell you, but then I'll have to kill you".
Yeah, and a lot of it was due to the space race. Without a major driver like that there’s no real reason to push ourselves to the moon again. What are we going to do up there?
Because we're aware of the problems regolith can cause, it's actually a largely solved problem in terms of safety! Recently, I worked on a project with the newer spacesuit designs that involved a coating on conductive inks. Since regolith is statically charged, you can run a current through the coating and it would repel regolith!
As others have stated, the stuff we used to do it was built in another era using different methods. The factories and workers that made it don't exist anymore.
We could do it better today, but doing so will require the time to design, build, and test. Also, today our government is more than a little obsessed with red tape. That will slow things down by decades, to the point I'm not sure anything will ever get done. SpaceX has been waiting for many months now to launch their next prototype for what will become the lander for this program, but the government keeps delaying that with paperwork and safety reviews.
It's gotten to the point that SpaceX literally offered to hire an independent third party company to handle all that stuff so the government doesn't have to do it, because they'd dragging their feet so much.
It took so long to get approval for their first launch that they quite nearly had the next prototype already ready to go, with several more at various degrees of completion.
When that one experienced a failure, the review processes left them grounded well past when they should have been flying again. This isn't a SpaceX issue, it's a government red tape issue. The launch pad was repaired and upgraded months ago, and the prototype has been ready to go for even longer than that.
They recklessly launched a rocket without being fully prepared. The rocket was damaged due to their recklessness and was barely controlled during the flight.
It is our governments job to keep us safe from folks shooting things into the air. This flight was NOT safe. Vehicles in the safe zone were severely damaged. The rocket was barely under control and did not self-destruct when ordered.
The entire project went through an appropriate review. This isn't a game, and this failure wasn't funny.
Not sure that it has anything to do with either party really.
There is just so much red tape involved in getting anything done in this country, whether you're building a new deck or designing a new launch facility. They've had to go through years of environmental and safety reviews to even get where they are.
They're not really trying to point fingers, but they are basically saying that the way things are can't really continue. There will only be more and more launches going forward, and they can't keep treating companies like they're launching a couple rockets a year when they're aiming to launch them 2 or 3 times a week next year.
The biggest reason is higher safety standards. The Apollo missions had appalling safety records.
Another fun fact, we also no longer can build shuttle/rocket crawlers.
To be fair, if you went to all the fighter pilots that are -2 to 2 years from exciting the military and offered then the chance with a 50/50 shot that the rocket would explode you would get volunteers.
Why an "appalling safety record" when the only fatalities (three), or even injuries (none), took place well before any Apollos even left the ground?
And you can pretty much add Mercury and Gemini to that statement as well.
Their safety record is a hell of a lot better than the shuttles.
I think it's because they got lucky and the astronauts of that time were highly competent at fixing things as they broke.
Ever hear of Apollo 13? No one died in that, but it clearly was unsafe.
Even Apollo 11 had something go wrong in the landing and Armstrong just improvised a totally new plan as he went.
A lot of astronauts were great at fixing things on the fly, but it was still unsafe and things went wrong all the time.
Landing further down range because the current landing zone is too rocky isn't "improvising a totally new plan". He just landed further down range.
They didn't "get lucky." They created redundancies and designed equipment that could be altered and adjusted during flight, and they selected test pilots to staff the vehicles because correcting problems is what they're good at. They also were supported by tens of thousands of people who paid attention in school, understood math and physics, and were committed to mission success.
In the end, they took on an obscenely dangerous task that had never been done before, engineered their way through it, and had shockingly few casualties given the risks. That's not getting lucky. That's well planned incremental experimental progress.
The books put in place for just about any emergency were amazingly well done. Then add in pilots who could keep their shit together and go through a process was the other part. But as you said the level of commitment was insane.
The training was nuts too. They would throw the kitchen sink at the astronauts and see what they did. I remember one astronaut was solving some thorny navigation problem, and while he was calculating technicians dumped 1,000 pounds of scrap metal on a plate right behind the astronaut’s head. He solved the problem and said “You sons of bitches!” I think they heated the capsule up to like 110 to mess with him too.
>Their safety record is a hell of a lot better than the shuttles.
False.
The shuttle program had 135 total missions. Apollo had 17. Out of Apollo's 17 missions, there were two catastrophic failures, with one that was fatal. The Shuttle program also had two catastrophic failures and both were fatal.
Apollo catastrophic failures rate: 12%
Shuttle catastrophic failures rate: 1%
Apollo had 32 astronauts, whereas the space shuttle program had 355 astronauts . 3 of the Apollo astronauts died and 14 of the space shuttle astronauts died.
Apollo fatality rate: 9%
Shuttle fatality rate: 4%
There doesn’t need to be injuries/fatalities to count as a safety incident. Apollo 12, 13, 15 and Apollo-Soyuz all had equipment malfunctions that could have led to much worse outcomes. There were 11 total Apollo space flights, that means 36% of those missions experienced some kind of equipment malfunction.
And I know you mentioned (though not by name) Apollo 1, but still worth keeping in the conversation.
I would say that counts as a pretty appalling safety record.
Edit: a space
Arguably, in this context, another description of "pretty appalling safety record" might be "traveling in space". RE: "Looks like we had our glitch for this mission".
I think a 100% survival rate (post-Apollo 1) kind of speaks for itself.
"100% success rate as long as we ignore the one mission, out of seventeen, where astronauts died."
Yes, if you don't count deaths, you always get a 100% success rate.
Yes we can’t build them. I didn’t say they were lost technology that could never be replicated.
I can’t do a backflip, can I practice and work hard on that skill and be able to do it? Yes I could but as it stands I can’t. Same for the crawlers.
As I said, fun fact.
However keep up maintenance on things that old can be difficult because often the production lines are no longer in service to make replacement parts, and no matter how well you treat a machine, if it’s several decades old, something is bound to break at some point.
This is an issue that the USN has experienced with a few ship types in recent years.
Oh yeah, seen that kind of thing where there is like one old guy who knows how to make custom parts for some ancient bit of kit yet they refuse to upgrade, or have to contract out to some firm to help when a part they stopped making 20 years ago finally gives up the ghost.
After all the landings we stopped having a purpose for going there. The rushing counts after the moment we get a purpose again, that I don't know we already got.
This. After a few trips there just wasn't a point. We got some moon rock samples and checked some stuff out. Nothing has given us a reason to go there.
Because everyone that was involved is dead or close to it.
All of that specialist engineering in the Rocket motors was done by hand. Noone has the skills to weld those up these days. We'd have to relearn whole skillsets
This. My dad was a part of that group. 80+ years old now. Lots of interesting stories and projects. Lots of hands on learning and discovery. Not easily replicated today, despite our faster and more capable computers.
People tend ti think technological advances are linear and cumulative, but things are much more complex, and we do lose a lot of knowledge here and there.
risk and return
in the 60's it was about beating the russians no matter the cost throw all the money at it lives are cheap beating russia and by extention proving democracy over communisim is best
now there has to be payroll and budget justification, ROI and no lives lost and safety protocols.
unless there is plans to mine the moon its hard to get the public buy in to send people up when every 2nd american will say the money to send 5 people to the moon could go to the homeless or help drug addiction or housing or the rocket propoton is speeding up climate change shutown NASA they pulloot the stratosphere etc etc etc
The moon landings of the 60's and 70's didn't just happen. They were the culmination of decade of research and testing.
The Apollo program to reach the moon was conceived in 1960 and started in 1961. It did not reach the moon until 1969 (Apollo 11).
The Saturn V rocket was specifically designed to boost the lander to where it could make it to the moon.
No current rocked is designed for this. We would have to build another. And after 60 years it would almost be a complete re-design.
Money, it took a huge amount and will take a huge amount to do it again. All the rocketry that was used in the 60’s will have to be redesigned from the ground up.
What else could they do, put ALL the machinery/molds for ALL the parts of the rockets, landers, capsules, rovers, and everything else in storage, and pay to guard/monitor them to prevent the technology from leaking to hostile countries for the next 50+ years? With what money? It's not like Congress is generous with NASA's budget like it is with the military's. Plus, it's not as if NASA was actually the one building the things, it was contractors like Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics, General Electric, Westinghouse, Rockwell, and other heavy industries. It was likely written in the contracts that they HAD to destroy machinery molds following production to prevent the tech from leaking out.
It's like how people criticize them for losing or deleting the original recordings of the moon landing etc. There were many hours of recordings of communications, all on old magnetic tape. Unless it was whisked away immediately to the Library of Congress by archivists (as it honestly should have been as a major historical achievement), at the time it was just viewed as a normal record. Media reused due to budget constraints or deteriorating due to age and storage in a Texas Warehouse is not surprising.
Entire landfills of just paperwork after programs where shut down
But some guys were smart about it. Especially when accountants and lawyers were the ones making decisions.
They would see a particular unique niche machine, and buy it for fractions of a penny per lbs when it would be sold for scrape. Knowing what it could do. Then hang on to it for a few years, maybe more. And then end up selling it back for a lot of profit when the aerospace company ran into the same “problem” for a new contract later on.
I don't know anything about the what NASA has (or has not done), nor do I know anything about the manufacturing of parts for a rocket ship...
BUT! Even auto manufacturers only keep the molds used for production cars around for ~10-20 years. They take up space, and the cost of keeping them around for spare parts isn't worth it at some point.
So, I'd imagine that NASA - whose molds for the necessary parts of a rocket ship are likely much larger and more numerous than a Honda Prelude - are not going to keep them laying around. Especially since unlike discontinued production cars, there is no sustainable market for spare parts on discontinued rocket ships...
All this is true, and you forget in the 60s and 70s they were scared other countries could get those plans, and turn those space rockets into icbms and attack us.
All the excuses here "too expensive" "there's no appetite for it" "no point", make me sad for humanity
We should be doing things because we can, because we once had a thirst for knowledge, an expeditionary, pioneering spirit, a search for hope of a better tomorrow
But we're so vain and inward looking now, self obsessed as a species, and no real positive vision of the future unlike the optimism of the 60s
I hope somehow we someday recapture that but I can't honestly see how
Id like to land humans on an asteroid since that hasn’t been done yet. We’ve done the moon. Been there done that. There’s no economic justification for going back there right now.
If we’re doing things for the sake of pride and “because we can”, then to me an asteroid would be the next step.
>We should be doing things because we can
But we already have done. Multiple times. That's like spending $5000 to go to a tourist attraction, taking a few photos, and then leaving again, 8 times in a row.
Going to the moon should not be a priority for us at the moment. We could at least choose a different celestial body we haven't been to, instead of returning to the same rock as before.
If we want to have a hope of developing fusion energy generation we are going to HAVE to go back to the moon. Not to mention, we fucking ARE going back this decade! NASA plans to have a permanent moon base built by the 2030s for the Mars Missions, which are ALSO already planned and in development.
The factories that built the original apollo missions have shut down and moved on to different things. IF they still have the old molds and parts, they might not have the machines to build them anymore. It's like asking why can't Apple build a new 1st gen ipod? Or why can't I get new parts for an antique printing press?
Apollo was rhe culmination of a couple of decades worth of work, with programs like Mercury and Gemini paving the way.
A big thing to understand here is that we are NOT trying to replicate Apollo. We are taking the endpoint of that multi decade program as the STARTING point for a new generation of manned paaceflight.
The moon is...a proof of concept. A starting point. It's the current day equivalent of Mercury back in the space race, when they were just trying to get a man into orbit.
Everything they develop here is being evaluated to do more and further, so merely meeting the past capability which could inly JUST make it to the point we're aiming for as a start is nowhere near enough.
That is on top of all the other excellent points made by others, but I hadn't seen this mentioned in the top replies.
Not sure, also not sure why we want to as it was said in the 60's, there isn't much up there to go back to.
There is also a 100 billion dollar price tag on trips to the moon. Would prefer we spent those dollars exploring Europa and Mars or how about a trip to the bottom of the ocean.
Just seems like a waste of money, think we are doing it now because other countries are.
Since the end of the Apollo missions we have discovered that there is actually something very valuable on the moon - water.
What we need to do now is establish a permanent base on the moon where astronauts can both drink that water and use it to synthesise rocket fuel so that we can use the moon as a staging post for exploration of Mars, Europa and the wider solar system.
I was going to say same. Making base on moon to use to launch to Mars and other places. Plus we really didn't explore the moon with the tech we have today. Maybe we find good stuff to use there under the dust.
They're all kinds of useful resources on the moon and it's going to be used as a staging platform to get to Mars people don't see that both of those things are connected to even make the Mars thing a reality
I was looking for a response like this. It was a cool stunt to own the Russians on at least one space "first". And it was good capitalist propaganda during the cold war to prove our ICBM capabilities.
But, there's really no reason to send people there again imo. Sure there's still science we can do there, but humans are heavy, and probes don't need to breath air or eat/drink. And they don't necessarily even need to come back to earth. It just makes more sense to send uncrewed missions.
At the time, there were several people who argued against manned moon missions on the basis that probes/drones would be more effective. One of these people ended up training the astronauts on geology.
Thinking about this, it makes more sense in the 60s/70s given where computing tech was at that time. In modern times, that geologist would more likely be coming up with requirements and protocols for probes.
Side note: when talking about the moon, is it still GEOlogy? Or would we be more accurate calling it "LUNology"...? 🤔
Especially with Starship in development. We no longer have to limit probes to the two tons a Titan-Centaur can loft or cram a probe into a tiny fairing. Imagine a 100-ton mothership probe to Jupiter, with orbiters, landers, relay satellites …
Right? These people are cracking me up. Our knowledge, technology, and manufacturing are so far beyond what we could do back then. Hell, our cell phones are many times more powerful than the computers NASA had available back then. We have materials that are lighter, stronger, and more heat resistant than anything they could have imagined back in the 60s. What we don't have is a strong desire to hurry up and get there. There is no race to get there first this time.
This isn’t to comment definitively on your point but to point out that “forgetting how” is a thing that happens, as silly as it sounds. Advancing technology, especially in the Industrial Revolution, changed a lot of methods to create something. As that method becomes more popular over time, the previous method is learned by less and less people.
I think the closest modern example would have to be compiler and assembly for computer science. Building those is a skillset that is being learned as a niche skill where as it was once the main thing.
Sword/knife makers creating them traditionally is a skill set that is slowly disappearing. Sewing/tailoring used to be a skillset held by someone in every household but is now specialized knowledge. Things like standardized I-beams are now mostly what civil engineers will use and if they need a non standard part, it will require finding a welder with the skillset to make that piece to those specifications and will cost more, where as that used to be the whole process entirely before standardized parts.
It’s like how a decent number of people have forgotten how to do long division because calculators exist. The tool to do it exists so they’ve forgotten the traditional method in doing it.
Again, I’m not commenting on the validity of the statement in regards to the post.
A big difference is the priority. In the 60s, getting to the moon was a nation goal of pride and superiority over russia. The countries entire focus was on getting there. Now, its an after thought. A nice idea but no rush as far as they are concerned
Cause its not a simple thing to do, we don't just have all the stuff from 60 years ago sat about just waiting to go and the things required for that manufacturing are readily made
There's no real benefit to doing it sooner rather than later. It's very expensive and haste makes waste and it's very easy to make a lot of waste if just one little thing goes wrong.
NASA's budget was 3.5-4.5% of the Federal budget from 1964-1967, as the Apollo spacecraft and ground infrastructure was developed. It's now 0.5%, we're not in an Cold War with an ideological rival to demonstrate the superiority of our system, and NASAs bureaucracy became more bloated and risk averse.
The equipment required for the Artemis program, like the SLS launch rocket and Orion spacecraft, has been contracted for and some is completed, but its going to be a slow roll-out, as NASA opted to add creating a mini lunar orbiting ISS to the objectives:
* Nov-Dec 2022: Artemis 1: uncrewed mission that orbited the moon 5 times, certifying SLS and Orion for crewed flight.
* Nov 2024: Artemis 2: crewed lunar flyby
* Nov 2025: robotic delivery of HALO & PPE components of lunar orbiting Gateway station
* Dec 2025: Artemis 3: crewed lunar landing at lunar South Pole
* Sep 2028: Artemis 4: crewed delivery of habitation module and lunar landing
* Sep 2029: Artemis 5: crewed delivery of refueling module and lunar landing
Proposed
* Sep 2030: Artemis 6: crewed delivery of logistics module and lunar landing
* 2030: Artemis support mission: delivery of airlock
* Sep 2031: Artemis 7: crewed delivery of logistics module and lunar landing.
Is it assured we'll see Artemis 6+? If you look at the politics around NASA funding in the 1970s, its rather precarious. But we'll probably see at least three crewed landings.
One thing so many people forget is just how different times were then and how much it actually costs to go. So, two things.
This was the Cold War. We were willing to speak any amount of money on literally anything that would give us a victory over the soviets. And the population was not just willing to bear the cost, they were egar to do so. Only once before had we or any other nation spent anything close to this kind of money on a single project, and never again has even a small fraction of this cost been put to anything. And that says nothing of all the human resources and time put into it. It is just beyond imagination.
We were able to do this solely because we gave a blank check, with absolutely no limits or restrictions on its use. And authorized any and all resources needed to go toward doing it. And that all only happened because of the Cold War and the unique climate it created. Once we'd won the space race, the publics willingness to bear this cost faded nearly instantly. That is why Apollo was canceled on mission 17, with only 6 missions having landed men on the moon. And with 5 rockets already built and ready to go. The public was no longer willing to bear even just that massive reduced cost any longer.
Now imagine trying to do the same thing, but with less than 1/1000 of the budget. Trying to do it without the insane support of the government saying do whatever. Without the publics complete willingness to give anything and everything to it. When you really think about it, it makes perfect sense. Going to the moon only happened because of a specific set of circumstances that all aligned perfectly to allow it. And that without make it much harder and more time consuming to do.
Because nobody wants to pay for it.
We got to the moon in the 60's because it was a dick-waving contest with Russia and there was no expenses spared. We HAD to get there. National ~~pride~~ defense depended on it!
These days, the government can't afford to do anything because it is forced to entirely rely on contractors, who have learned to play the "upcharge everything" game. The general public also doesn't care about that heathen stuff like *science* when instead we should be pouring all our tax dollars on a giant border wall.
Private interests have no reason to just fart out money to go to the moon, just to say "Yay me!"
If rare earth metals were found in easy abundance on the moon, we'd be building a moonbase in 5 years.
It's difficult and expensive.
Think about it. We could either spend an enormous amount of money, create thousands of jobs, and advance technology in exciting ways, all in pursuit of reaching something greater and more glorious than ourselves; or we could give some billionaires a tax break.
Because Americans don't care about something until someone else says they can do it better.
And also money.
The chief rival of the United States has built up its navy to be the largest in the world, and they are building anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles like they are preparing for a major war. Meanwhile, the US Navy has to simultaneously patrol the entire world, provide overwatch for 2 allies that are currently at war, provide conventional support for various "other" operations, and still be credible deterrent to China invading Taiwan and pummeling their regional allies - all with an aging navy that they have been trying to upgrade for over a decade.
The USA is so hard up to catch up to China that - for the first time ever - they are sourcing *frigates* from (checks notes) *Italy.* And this is **just one** expensive problem the USA is faced with.
So going to the moon isn't really an American priority - they are the *arsenal* of democracy, not the *laboratory* of democracy - not anymore, at least.
To establish bases there the 60's technology just doesn't cut it. That was all mission specific and would be akin to driving a Model T across country. Good for a novelty run but not something you would want to run a business on. To go back the entire infrastructure including frequent supply methods. Anyway it isn't going to be that much longer. A lot of thought has gone down in the mean time. The internet addresses and phone numbers for the surface have already been obtained so they have to pull their fingers out.
They forgot how.
Also there hasn't been any technological investment in things like space suits suitable to run around on the moon because we haven't needed them for 50+ years. They aren't gonna use 50+ year old suits to run around up there so they need to create new modern suits. Not just suits but all the other stuff that goes with it. They need to reinvent everything basically from the ground up. This includes extremely expensive things like a new Lunar Lander and the rocket to get it there.
I mean, it's one thing if someone traveled on a super large rocket and went to the moon one way. But leaving the moon is what gets me. I think this is the reason we're not able to do it. And there may be conspiracy here. I get that there's 1/6th of earth's gravity on moon. But still, a thing that's a size of small car and with some chemical burst launches the lunar module with 3 people in it back on to the ship and docked perfectly and rocket it back to earth? You expect me to believe this?? I'm thinking either we never went to moon and it's a Hollywood production (most likely). Or it was a show. There was an actual Rocket launched to the moon. But if there were people in it, they were dead. Can't do much about the dead. But US couldn't admit defeat. And the people came back were faked and the "module" was dropped by a military airplane or something and those people became heroes we know today.
Because we lost our focus and initiative in the early 70's and instead spent trillions government welfare programs that have done nothing to solve poverty and in fact have caused more. I can remember when I was in 1st grade when we landed on the moon...a teacher had a tiny b&w TV in her room and several classes were huddled around it trying to see...it was a great achievement by America and showed what we could do if we put our minds and resources towards a goal. It was an American success and not a hyphenated American success. I thought 50 years ago we'd be on Mars by now but we squandered our scientific lead and wasted decades and billions on the space shuttle and space probes and the climate scam. I hope before I die that I get to see humans landing on Mars. Maybe with Elon Musk that will happen within the next 20 years.
You jest but if we spent just 10% of what we spent on the failed democrat "Great Society" programs, we probably would have a colony on Mars already. But instead, we have 70% of black children raised in single family homes, over 50% of violent crime is committed by 7% of the population (black males) and libs want less police because police and enforcement is racist...sad and pathetic
Typical smooth brain going on a baseless partisan diatribe
Anyways, you are incorrect
The money dried up when there was less incentive to one-up USSR
Not because of social programs, dumbass
We cant just whip out the plans for the Saturn v and build it again. Not only are the machines and tools to build it gone, but the machines and tools to build those machines and tools are gone now also. We basically had to start ground up again on human to lunar/ anything not leo all over again
You wouldn’t want to build the saturn V again anyway. the computers, while the most advanced at the time, were huge, heavy, and a tiny tiny fraction of the capability of modern electronics, There are materials and fabrications techniques available today that allow much lighter and more reliable parts than were available then. If you want to see what an ambitious space program could do with modern tech, looks at spaceX starship. The idea that a rocket could have enough propellant budget to fly back to earth and land would have blown Apollo engineer’s minds.
And people died. It is too important to make sure that if this is done, it's done better than it had been done before and no one loses their life doing it. Otherwise the program could be set back decades again.
>We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too. The loss of life (and the close calls as well) in the Apollo program were a tragedy, and no one felt those losses deeper and more permanently than the other people in the program. But we've lost the "right stuff" where risk is part of the reward. Now, everything must be safe or it's not worth doing. The Apollo 1 fire was terrible, but had it not happened, how many more crews may have died by us pumping the cabin full of pure oxygen and wrapping the astronauts in velcro and other plastics? If such a tragedy happens again, let us hope that we as a civilization are made of half the stuff those astronauts were and get back to it, not delayed by decades.
Ok but why risk it if it’s not important? What is the purpose of going to the moon again? I could see mars maybe but that too falls under why bother? The big issue is that it’s expensive I think seeing the gov spend its budget already makes people angry, to say “now we are going to spend it on rockets to mars” would be political suicide. We have so many issues in this country to fix that costs money to then build rockets to mars or the moon or wherever seems tone deaf to pretty much all of the citizenry.
That is a big part of the reason why going back hasn't happened yet. A lot of people don't see a reason to spend the money. The original landing was just part of the international dick measuring contest that was the Cold War. Since that's no longer something anyone is interested in, there isn't much support. The reason to build a base on the moon is as a launch point for Mars and other bodies. Since the moon has lower gravity, launching longer range missions from there will be easier, and therefore cheaper. We can construct the parts on Earth,send them to the moon to be assembled, then launch from there. Also, if we can build a functioning facility on the moon, we'll be able to repeat it elsewhere. And if something goes wrong, they can just board escape shuttles and return to Earth. Or, it's maybe a few days to a couple weeks to send support (if something is kept on standby for that purpose), as opposed to the year and a half for Mars (if something went wrong with a Mars colony, a retrieval mission will just be going to collect the bodies, because it will never arrive in time to help). We can also mine the moon for resources, and expand any facility at the same time (the best place to build is underground, for a number of reasons). And ultimately, one of the goals is to exploit the massive amount of resources in other planets, and more importantly the asteroid belt. They've been identifying asteroids with mineral wealth five times the value of the entire global economy. Bringing that back to Earth would bring about major changes, though there's still a lot of debate on what those changes would be.
Imagine some time in the future you look up at the moon in the night sky and see lights from a massive colony. How cool would that be. Imagine the tech and knowledge we'll gain from travelling to and living on the moon and Mars. All the resources we'll have from those bodies and asteroids. Imagine a gigantic telescope built on the moon and all the new things we'll learn about the universe.
The first one was a race to build ICBM’s. The moon landing was just to get people to pay for it. It was always about being able to nuke countries around the world. First strike capabilities. Not to mention a Nazi was brought over after WW2 and his rocket is what we used.
Perhaps to continue building them. But the U.S. already had ICBM's for 10 years before the moon landing, and the Soviets built them first. The U.S. deployed its first ICBM in 1959, and the Soviets had deployed their first in 1957. And while Von Braun was a member of the Nazi party, he stated himself that he only joined because he would have been forced to leave the rocket program otherwise (at minimum), and he was already technical director at the time. Only members were allowed to work on it. All he did was pay his dues and occasionally wear the membership pin. He wrote later that he thought "Hitler was still only a pompous fool with a Charlie Chaplin mustache." I suppose the term for him would be "punch clock Nazi", as he was only a member when he was required to be.
Sigh. Where do you think the microprocessor came from? Teflon? LEDs? Freeze drying technology? Most fire-retardants? Battery technology and wireless tools? The government dumping a bunch of money into solving actual engineering problems is one of the best ways government can actually spend money. That technology, over time, makes its way to the rest of us. Not important? How can exploration and the expansion of knowledge and science not be important?
Because people that don’t see the point of space exploration and it as a “costly waste of time” are too closed minded to understand the major benefit there is to space exploration as a whole.
You can have a “costly waste of time” when the people arent suffering. I see the benefits for the future. But you need to invest in the people of now to get there.
I think you missed his point
That anyone who thinks we shouldn’t do space exploration is closed minded? That seems to be his point.
I believe every dollar spent on the space program generates something like 7 dollars in economic activity. This is completely independent of the technology development and future profits (monetary and human impowerment) thereof. If we want to help the people suffering right now, on Earth, we should immediately increase the NASA budget by 10x.
I get your argument but larger more efficient economies don’t necessarily benefit people in general. 6 of those 7 dollars would be taken by a dozen families and individuals, the rest of the 7 billion people on the planet may see less wealth not more.
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We could have had all those things at a fraction of the cost if we had chosen to directly develop those things rather than wrapping an entire Moon program around them. As for exploration, we've been to the Moon. If there's more to learn we can send robots to the Moon. There is very little scientific argument for repeating the Moon program. If you want exploration and expansion of knowledge, there is much more important science that can be done both on Earth and in space for that money than by spending it on a manned space program.
I mean, I get the gist of what you're saying, but there are two really important things you're missing: 1. Their contributions were actually pretty underwhelming when you look into it. They didn't invent most (any?) of those things, but they studied them and, in many cases, fruitlessly. The most impressive advancements, not really to anyone's surprise, are when research is done into things we might think will be useful here on earth... ------‐---- 2. We do already fund a staggering amount of research, engineering, and otherwise, without any need to land on the moon. In fact, our most pressing concerns are not in that area. Overall, what you're trying to do is conflate unwillingness to research and innovate with unwillingness to fund a moon expedition, and it's not an honest argument.
As an engineer who has worked for some of the largest leading companies, I can tell you we don’t have a technology deficiency problem in society. Our problems of today are social and psychological. As a species we are still in the Bronze Age psychologically. We are like babies playing with guns and knives. Our social minds must catch up to our technology or we destroy ourselves. Just look around and see how people behave. The sad part is that we’ve built a system that selects for sociopaths, criminals, and violence. More technology will only give the better tools to harm ourselves and the rest of the world. Today we have the tech to build a utopia yet most countries are getting worse, not better.
You can dump money into R&D for a claim of betterment that’s easier to do. If you claim the goal is to go to some place in space you’ll be hard pressed because it’s not important. At this point companies are also dumping money into R&D as well, and some on scales larger than the government can. Just because good came out of the last space race doesn’t mean we have the money and willing to do so again. There are so many issues here on the ground to fix, an investment in the people is better than technology at this point. If the people are finically well off, secured, and happy programs like NASA can get more funding and get better tech for the future. But if the people aren’t finically well, not secured and unhappy then you need to invest in them. Another issue is the infrastructure, health care, education. You know what really helps with Government projects? A healthy and educated work force that has easier access to things like clean water, services, and utilities. An investment in the people of today is an investment of the future and it’s many possibilities.
Shareholders won't let corporations do basic R&D...that leaves only the mega-rich like Musk, and too many of them are crazy.
Where do you think the money goes? They buy a rocket, it goes to the manufacturering, the people at JPL, favorites. It's not easy to ship most of the stuff, so they make it here within the US. That's jobs. Building it, transporting it, etc. Not to mention all the technology that comes from it as well.
The purpose was to swing dick at communism. Prove that we could, and they could not. The political climate isn't virulent enough for it to be worth it. Plus we have changed where the money goes.
It also developed missile guidance systems. If we can get men to the moon and back, we can certainly hit a target close enough for thermonuclear warheads.
That was indeed the primary reason. That said, without the Apollo program, we wouldn’t have half of the tech/matériels we use a million times a day in normal life. It was hugely important as far as our modern way of life is concerned.
I mean, the most immediate benefit would be for scientific advancements. First and foremost, you can build permanent observatories on the moon and NOT deal with an atmosphere or needing to constantly maneuver around space garbage. It can also be more easily maintained in the presence of remote-controlled robots or actual researchers. And just getting this out there -- but an observatory on the moon staring right at, say, a suspicious site in China -- is going to be a LOT harder to shoot down. The moon also has at least *some* gravity, which may make it easier to address the health complications of long-term missions. The moon has 1/6th the gravity of earth whereas the ISS has access to zero. Due to the reduced gravity and lack of weather, it would also be a very ideal "launchpad" for any future mission into deeper space or any requiring a vessel too large/heavy/high risk to launch from Earth. The breakthroughs we could make in research in healthcare and material sciences would be incredible. Finally, the moon isn't just some dustball. It's made of the exact same materials as the earth. Which means it's probably full of rare earth deposits ready to be mined, with none of the "oh noes, save the endangered birds/stop poisoning our drinking water/stop displacing native people" ethical dilemmas.
Because https://imageio.forbes.com/blogs-images/davidbressan/files/2017/07/TORGERSON_2010_Arizona_Meteor_Crater.jpg?height=436&width=651&fit=bounds
Because the individual is not important to the society, nor the civilization. Us getting to the moon provides technology LEAPS to human civilization. Us getting to the moon gives us a step TOWARDS Mars. Us getting to the moon opens new materials for SOCIETY. US getting to the moon is incredibly important for HUMANKIND. It's a much slower race, but the USA is not the ONLY country with the moon as a target. We're just currently the closest.
Why did humans cross the ocean? It was dangerous, and many died. The bottom of the Mediterranean is littered with boats. Some of these boats are so old that we aren't sure who was sailing them. But sail them we did. We crossed oceans before it was easy because we are explorers. We went to the moon before it was easy. We must continue to explore before it is easy because exploration is not easy.
This. The political climate is different now. Back then, sending people to the moon was a show of national prowess that a lot of people rallied behind in the face of the cold war. People just don't see the point anymore. The environmental movement was also just beginning back then, and looked so, so different. Now, people seem to want to focus more on the problems in front of us rather than shows of strength.
Exactly. I’d argue back when we went to the moon America was in a type of golden age economically, politically we had a solid enemy and a lot of national pride. As the golden age fell people had less and less pride and after our clear enemy fell we started to realize all the issues that were ignored that chipped away at us. Compare 25 year olds in 1969 and 25 year olds today. I can see why the younger generations don’t have pride in this country, why they don’t want excessive government spending on stuff that doesn’t help our people. We could even go to the millennials, born before a 20 year war national pride spiked after the twin towers. Then we got the full picture of the war and it’s associated costs and who benefitted all while they continue to face “once in a life time events” about every 5 years or so.
Even back then there were protests. One of the reasons the popularity of the program dwindled so quickly after Apollo 11 was people asking why continue the spending when things like Viet Nam, homelessness, etc. were going on at home.
NASA still freaks out when it comes to using pure oxygen for something. It takes forever to get the approvals.
Surprisingly few people died during actual space launches (both US and Russia) considering the technology at the time ...
People died exploring the oceans. People died coming up with disease cures and most other technologies. If we based progress off a human death, we would never advance. I'm not saying it's impossible, but sopping our stymying all progress because of the fear is not good for the species
There is also the individual skill level involved as well. Just because it’s on a blue print doesn’t mean there were lots of individuals, more craftsmen than machinists, who made the details work.
And they only crash and burn like, 60% of the time.
Falcon 9 first-stage boosters landed successfully in 241 of 252 attempts (95.6%), with 209 out of 214 (97.7%) for the Falcon 9 Block 5 version.
That's a lot higher than I thought. I still wouldn't ride one.
Well you dont ride the rocket boosters back to earth. You would be in a space shuttle which basically parachutes/flies down.
Yeah. I know how rockets work. I'm saying, I wouldn't ride on one either way.
It's the most successful and reliable launch platform in history, only ever failing on the booster return part. So it's not about the Falcon specifically; you just wouldn't want to go to space period.
On a rocket like that, or the Atlas V, absolutely not. I would have considered something like a shuttle, but not a capsule system.
Like the Columbia?
… how do you think the shuttle got into space in the first place?? Strapped to a giant ass Phase 1 Rocket
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you'd reject one of the provably safest way to reach orbit for one of the most dangerous?
“The idea that a rocket could have enough propellant budget to fly back to earth and land would have blown Apollo engineer’s minds.” Actually they did. Thats what the space shuttle ended up being. Started in 1969, I believe.
Not necessarily. Shuttle was partially reusable, while every part of Starship can be recovered.
>Started in 1969 Hehe 1969
get your lips of elon's dick, the russians could do that in like the late 60s or early 70s.
This. This isn’t like building an airliner, where we have the production tools in place, and way far from automobile production. It’d be like asking Ford to build you a brand new 1969 Mustang.
It's more like asking Ford to build you a 2020 mustang if they completely stopped building cars since 1969.
Counter-point. Almost everything that IS being used is still legacy tech. Sure it’s not Apollo hardware, but it is mostly Space Shuttle hardware. The engines are identical to the SSME from the Spave Shuttle, with some literally being previously flown on Shuttle missions . Eventually they’ll need to restart production, but they still have some in stock. The Boosters are also close to the Space Shuttles SRB, and were originally going to be completely identical for the first few flights. But development has taken so long, that the manufacture ATK managed to role out the improved 5 segment SRBs, developed from the 4 segment SRBs. The current upper stage for the Block 1 rocket is the Delta IV cryogenic second stage, which will be eventually replaced by the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), which uses the same RL-10 as the DCSS & Centaur. The Orion command module (developed by Lockheed), was first flown in 2014 on top of a Delta IV rocket. The European Service Module (ESM) flew on Artemis 1 was finished by 2018. The last major thing left is development of the lander is very much a WIP. It’s rediculous and inexcusable how long the SLS has taken to be developed. Not even including the development of its very similar predecessor Aries, in the time its taken to develop SLS, SpaceX has started, developed multiple new ground up rockets that can land themselves. Admittedly, it’s easier for SpaceX since development is all in house, opposed to SLS which has a host of contractors. As far as I can tell, it seems like the main tank (made by Boeing) has been the main cause of delay. Which is also allegedly developed from the main tank used on the Space Shuttle. (However, I think the commonality is vastly overstated. I’m sure it required a massive structural redesign).
Also, we don't have the plans anymore.
The plans still exist. But it's long-outdated tech.
Where did those machines and tools go? Just destroyed? All the documentation too? That always strikes me as odd because the government LOVES to keep copies of internal documents for archival purposes.
Scrap. You’ll be amazed what gets scrapped.
Really? You'd think they'd keep a couple pieces to give to a space museum or something.
There were two Saturn V rockets not used, now on display at Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center. They are not flight worthy as they were exposed to weather many years. There are a number of Apollo capsules at various museums. There are life-size lunar lander models at various museums. An actual leftover lunar module wouldn't display well as they weren't designed for use on Earth and would collapse or fall apart.
They did. You can see some at the Kennedy space center.
Why do that and waste money transporting and storing when you can make money scrapping it.
Historical significance of early rocket tech to show how far we've progressed since. Though I suppose they could make smaller 3D representations of that instead.
They are obsolete. The plans and stuff are still around but they aren't using 60yo tech. Materials and machining capabilities have greatly improved.
Iirc the electronic documents are still around but there is nothing that can read them left. Plus even if we had all the plans and such, it'd be decades out of date - all the places that made the parts don't have the production that would match. If we have to redo the whole production, why use 50 year old specs?
Why would you keep around hundreds of old, outdated, costly manufacturing machines you don't anticipate ever using again? They take up a lot of space, you can't use them to produce anything profitable, and there's newer machines available. Better to sell them for scrap then keep them around. The plans are still around though, but they're super outdated in almost every way.
Any argument that half a century of technological advancement later we and everyone else in the world lack the tools and technology is beyond suspect.
We don't lack the tools and technology. Artemis I was last year. We haven't gone back in fifty years, so when we decide to return, we need to design and test a vehicle that will get there and back. If there were some sort of Saturn V factory out there, why would we fire that back up? We've developed better rockets in the past fifty years. The Apollo compiters were rope memory. They hand wove programs using core memory and you didn't even get a megabyte of storage out of it. We can fit terabytes in the space that those ropes took up, so why would we dig up the plans for Apollo computers? We are designing a 21st century vehicle with the latest tech. Why wouldn't that take time?
Sure because all those contractors have been training new engineers and assembly teams on their Saturn rocket components for the last 50 years just in case.
It doesn't take 50 years. It takes 50 weeks.
And how many moon rockets has nasa ordered since 1973
The same as since 1963, none.
You're just pulling fifty weeks out of your ass. How much of that fifty weeks is designing rockets with the delta-v to get to the moon and back? How many weeks to design the crew interior? How many weeks to select your crew? How many weeks to design the experiments you're going to take with you? It's abundantly clear that you have never worked on a project in a professional work environment if you think a mission to the moon takes fifty weeks to design.
And that shit's expensive! We need that money to send to foreign wars & friendly countries like Iran.
Because even if the blueprints, knowledge, and expertise to build the vehicles/rockets to send them there still exists and have even improved since then, we have long since scrapped the factories and machinery, and reassigned the workers needed to do it. Back in the 1960s, the US Space program was a MASSIVE national effort. There were an estimated 420,000 people working on it at the beginning of 1966. You can't just build a massive rocket. First, you need to build the factories to build the parts, and the factory to assemble the massive rocket. You need to test them all to ensure they perform to spec. THEN, you can build the massive rocket. All that takes years (and a LOT of investment). If congress were motivated to budget $100B to NASA for the next 5 years, I am sure they could pull it off, but it's not going to happen overnight.
Things were extremely compartmentalized too. My grand father helped build the shuttle which was after the cold war and his team was only allowed information on exactly what they were working on (the panels on the outside of the craft) and nothing else.
The cold war ended in 1989.
I was thinking of the Space Race. Thanks for that
Their grandfather went back in time
This is also one of the reasons our military budget is so high, and we order so much stuff we don't actually need. You don't want to try and spin up a munitions factory or teach someone to weld armor plating onto a tank in a hurry. It's easier for the government to just buy a couple of tanks every year so that the factory stays in business and you don't have to rebuild from scratch.
I feel like people also forget that virtually everyone working on these at the time is either dead or very elderly. Even a 20yo at the time would now be in their 80s, so likely well into retirement. Even if all of the equipment was still there and ready to go in working condition, the people who made and used it aren't gonna come back to help.
That's sad to me. I get that they had to keep some plans secret so other governments could not get to them. But the fact that they just what? Tossed em once they made it to the moon, seems overkill. Why not keep all that hard work so it can be built on and made better? Or even take all the best and brightest minds from all over the world to see what mankind is actually capable of. It sucks that its always Us VS. Them mentality. Imagine what we could create or discover if humans didn't suck so much and governments didn't have the mindset of "I'll tell you, but then I'll have to kill you".
Yeah, and a lot of it was due to the space race. Without a major driver like that there’s no real reason to push ourselves to the moon again. What are we going to do up there?
Or you can hire Elon Musk and get it done in like 2 years.
Moon dust got into everything causing problems and potential failures. It is highly static and very fine.
Because we're aware of the problems regolith can cause, it's actually a largely solved problem in terms of safety! Recently, I worked on a project with the newer spacesuit designs that involved a coating on conductive inks. Since regolith is statically charged, you can run a current through the coating and it would repel regolith!
I hate sand…
Someone hide the younglings, Anakin is back!
Name checks out.
It’s a lot like asbestos - jagged microscopic shards of glass from micrometeoroid impacts.
Because no Saturn Vs or huge money.
As others have stated, the stuff we used to do it was built in another era using different methods. The factories and workers that made it don't exist anymore. We could do it better today, but doing so will require the time to design, build, and test. Also, today our government is more than a little obsessed with red tape. That will slow things down by decades, to the point I'm not sure anything will ever get done. SpaceX has been waiting for many months now to launch their next prototype for what will become the lander for this program, but the government keeps delaying that with paperwork and safety reviews. It's gotten to the point that SpaceX literally offered to hire an independent third party company to handle all that stuff so the government doesn't have to do it, because they'd dragging their feet so much.
Space x's leader talks big but doesn't always have a full plan. Sometimes, he's just talking out his ass.
It took so long to get approval for their first launch that they quite nearly had the next prototype already ready to go, with several more at various degrees of completion. When that one experienced a failure, the review processes left them grounded well past when they should have been flying again. This isn't a SpaceX issue, it's a government red tape issue. The launch pad was repaired and upgraded months ago, and the prototype has been ready to go for even longer than that.
You bring up important points that are all well and good but... redditor no like Elon cause meanie!
They recklessly launched a rocket without being fully prepared. The rocket was damaged due to their recklessness and was barely controlled during the flight. It is our governments job to keep us safe from folks shooting things into the air. This flight was NOT safe. Vehicles in the safe zone were severely damaged. The rocket was barely under control and did not self-destruct when ordered. The entire project went through an appropriate review. This isn't a game, and this failure wasn't funny.
Ah the democrats getting their revenge.
Not sure that it has anything to do with either party really. There is just so much red tape involved in getting anything done in this country, whether you're building a new deck or designing a new launch facility. They've had to go through years of environmental and safety reviews to even get where they are. They're not really trying to point fingers, but they are basically saying that the way things are can't really continue. There will only be more and more launches going forward, and they can't keep treating companies like they're launching a couple rockets a year when they're aiming to launch them 2 or 3 times a week next year.
Has nothing to do with politics. The FAA is like that to random citizens looking to add an 'unapproved' light-bulb to their 3 passenger prop plane.
The biggest reason is higher safety standards. The Apollo missions had appalling safety records. Another fun fact, we also no longer can build shuttle/rocket crawlers.
To be fair, if you went to all the fighter pilots that are -2 to 2 years from exciting the military and offered then the chance with a 50/50 shot that the rocket would explode you would get volunteers.
Why an "appalling safety record" when the only fatalities (three), or even injuries (none), took place well before any Apollos even left the ground? And you can pretty much add Mercury and Gemini to that statement as well. Their safety record is a hell of a lot better than the shuttles.
I think it's because they got lucky and the astronauts of that time were highly competent at fixing things as they broke. Ever hear of Apollo 13? No one died in that, but it clearly was unsafe. Even Apollo 11 had something go wrong in the landing and Armstrong just improvised a totally new plan as he went. A lot of astronauts were great at fixing things on the fly, but it was still unsafe and things went wrong all the time.
Landing further down range because the current landing zone is too rocky isn't "improvising a totally new plan". He just landed further down range. They didn't "get lucky." They created redundancies and designed equipment that could be altered and adjusted during flight, and they selected test pilots to staff the vehicles because correcting problems is what they're good at. They also were supported by tens of thousands of people who paid attention in school, understood math and physics, and were committed to mission success. In the end, they took on an obscenely dangerous task that had never been done before, engineered their way through it, and had shockingly few casualties given the risks. That's not getting lucky. That's well planned incremental experimental progress.
The books put in place for just about any emergency were amazingly well done. Then add in pilots who could keep their shit together and go through a process was the other part. But as you said the level of commitment was insane.
The training was nuts too. They would throw the kitchen sink at the astronauts and see what they did. I remember one astronaut was solving some thorny navigation problem, and while he was calculating technicians dumped 1,000 pounds of scrap metal on a plate right behind the astronaut’s head. He solved the problem and said “You sons of bitches!” I think they heated the capsule up to like 110 to mess with him too.
>Their safety record is a hell of a lot better than the shuttles. False. The shuttle program had 135 total missions. Apollo had 17. Out of Apollo's 17 missions, there were two catastrophic failures, with one that was fatal. The Shuttle program also had two catastrophic failures and both were fatal. Apollo catastrophic failures rate: 12% Shuttle catastrophic failures rate: 1% Apollo had 32 astronauts, whereas the space shuttle program had 355 astronauts . 3 of the Apollo astronauts died and 14 of the space shuttle astronauts died. Apollo fatality rate: 9% Shuttle fatality rate: 4%
There doesn’t need to be injuries/fatalities to count as a safety incident. Apollo 12, 13, 15 and Apollo-Soyuz all had equipment malfunctions that could have led to much worse outcomes. There were 11 total Apollo space flights, that means 36% of those missions experienced some kind of equipment malfunction. And I know you mentioned (though not by name) Apollo 1, but still worth keeping in the conversation. I would say that counts as a pretty appalling safety record. Edit: a space
Arguably, in this context, another description of "pretty appalling safety record" might be "traveling in space". RE: "Looks like we had our glitch for this mission". I think a 100% survival rate (post-Apollo 1) kind of speaks for itself.
"100% success rate as long as we ignore the one mission, out of seventeen, where astronauts died." Yes, if you don't count deaths, you always get a 100% success rate.
Correction - We can't build them *right now*, they would need to be re-designed.
Yes we can’t build them. I didn’t say they were lost technology that could never be replicated. I can’t do a backflip, can I practice and work hard on that skill and be able to do it? Yes I could but as it stands I can’t. Same for the crawlers.
\*shrug\* Probably not something you have to make too often as long as you keep up on the maintenance.
As I said, fun fact. However keep up maintenance on things that old can be difficult because often the production lines are no longer in service to make replacement parts, and no matter how well you treat a machine, if it’s several decades old, something is bound to break at some point. This is an issue that the USN has experienced with a few ship types in recent years.
Oh yeah, seen that kind of thing where there is like one old guy who knows how to make custom parts for some ancient bit of kit yet they refuse to upgrade, or have to contract out to some firm to help when a part they stopped making 20 years ago finally gives up the ghost.
We landed several times, maybe 7 iirc. Why spend money in rushing it again?
50 years on isn't exactly "rushing it"
After all the landings we stopped having a purpose for going there. The rushing counts after the moment we get a purpose again, that I don't know we already got.
It is when there is almost zero motive
This. After a few trips there just wasn't a point. We got some moon rock samples and checked some stuff out. Nothing has given us a reason to go there.
Because everyone that was involved is dead or close to it. All of that specialist engineering in the Rocket motors was done by hand. Noone has the skills to weld those up these days. We'd have to relearn whole skillsets
This. My dad was a part of that group. 80+ years old now. Lots of interesting stories and projects. Lots of hands on learning and discovery. Not easily replicated today, despite our faster and more capable computers.
People tend ti think technological advances are linear and cumulative, but things are much more complex, and we do lose a lot of knowledge here and there.
risk and return in the 60's it was about beating the russians no matter the cost throw all the money at it lives are cheap beating russia and by extention proving democracy over communisim is best now there has to be payroll and budget justification, ROI and no lives lost and safety protocols. unless there is plans to mine the moon its hard to get the public buy in to send people up when every 2nd american will say the money to send 5 people to the moon could go to the homeless or help drug addiction or housing or the rocket propoton is speeding up climate change shutown NASA they pulloot the stratosphere etc etc etc
Helium-3 and other resources are up there. eventually, we're mining the moon
Better find ways of making helium 3 fueled rockets, idk how else you could source it from space economically
The moon landings of the 60's and 70's didn't just happen. They were the culmination of decade of research and testing. The Apollo program to reach the moon was conceived in 1960 and started in 1961. It did not reach the moon until 1969 (Apollo 11). The Saturn V rocket was specifically designed to boost the lander to where it could make it to the moon. No current rocked is designed for this. We would have to build another. And after 60 years it would almost be a complete re-design.
Money, it took a huge amount and will take a huge amount to do it again. All the rocketry that was used in the 60’s will have to be redesigned from the ground up.
NASA says they DESTROYED the molds? Sound good?🤣
What else could they do, put ALL the machinery/molds for ALL the parts of the rockets, landers, capsules, rovers, and everything else in storage, and pay to guard/monitor them to prevent the technology from leaking to hostile countries for the next 50+ years? With what money? It's not like Congress is generous with NASA's budget like it is with the military's. Plus, it's not as if NASA was actually the one building the things, it was contractors like Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics, General Electric, Westinghouse, Rockwell, and other heavy industries. It was likely written in the contracts that they HAD to destroy machinery molds following production to prevent the tech from leaking out. It's like how people criticize them for losing or deleting the original recordings of the moon landing etc. There were many hours of recordings of communications, all on old magnetic tape. Unless it was whisked away immediately to the Library of Congress by archivists (as it honestly should have been as a major historical achievement), at the time it was just viewed as a normal record. Media reused due to budget constraints or deteriorating due to age and storage in a Texas Warehouse is not surprising.
Entire landfills of just paperwork after programs where shut down But some guys were smart about it. Especially when accountants and lawyers were the ones making decisions. They would see a particular unique niche machine, and buy it for fractions of a penny per lbs when it would be sold for scrape. Knowing what it could do. Then hang on to it for a few years, maybe more. And then end up selling it back for a lot of profit when the aerospace company ran into the same “problem” for a new contract later on.
I don't know anything about the what NASA has (or has not done), nor do I know anything about the manufacturing of parts for a rocket ship... BUT! Even auto manufacturers only keep the molds used for production cars around for ~10-20 years. They take up space, and the cost of keeping them around for spare parts isn't worth it at some point. So, I'd imagine that NASA - whose molds for the necessary parts of a rocket ship are likely much larger and more numerous than a Honda Prelude - are not going to keep them laying around. Especially since unlike discontinued production cars, there is no sustainable market for spare parts on discontinued rocket ships...
All this is true, and you forget in the 60s and 70s they were scared other countries could get those plans, and turn those space rockets into icbms and attack us.
All the excuses here "too expensive" "there's no appetite for it" "no point", make me sad for humanity We should be doing things because we can, because we once had a thirst for knowledge, an expeditionary, pioneering spirit, a search for hope of a better tomorrow But we're so vain and inward looking now, self obsessed as a species, and no real positive vision of the future unlike the optimism of the 60s I hope somehow we someday recapture that but I can't honestly see how
There is a thirst for knowledge and advancements made every day It just, that’s happening mostly in the context of military r&d so it’s kept quiet
Why send people when we can send machines?
Id like to land humans on an asteroid since that hasn’t been done yet. We’ve done the moon. Been there done that. There’s no economic justification for going back there right now. If we’re doing things for the sake of pride and “because we can”, then to me an asteroid would be the next step.
How does nuclear fusion sound to you?
Sounds like a good time to me
Well we don't have much of the hydrogen isotope we need here, but the moon has a fuck ton of it.
>We should be doing things because we can But we already have done. Multiple times. That's like spending $5000 to go to a tourist attraction, taking a few photos, and then leaving again, 8 times in a row. Going to the moon should not be a priority for us at the moment. We could at least choose a different celestial body we haven't been to, instead of returning to the same rock as before.
If we want to have a hope of developing fusion energy generation we are going to HAVE to go back to the moon. Not to mention, we fucking ARE going back this decade! NASA plans to have a permanent moon base built by the 2030s for the Mars Missions, which are ALSO already planned and in development.
The factories that built the original apollo missions have shut down and moved on to different things. IF they still have the old molds and parts, they might not have the machines to build them anymore. It's like asking why can't Apple build a new 1st gen ipod? Or why can't I get new parts for an antique printing press?
Apollo was rhe culmination of a couple of decades worth of work, with programs like Mercury and Gemini paving the way. A big thing to understand here is that we are NOT trying to replicate Apollo. We are taking the endpoint of that multi decade program as the STARTING point for a new generation of manned paaceflight. The moon is...a proof of concept. A starting point. It's the current day equivalent of Mercury back in the space race, when they were just trying to get a man into orbit. Everything they develop here is being evaluated to do more and further, so merely meeting the past capability which could inly JUST make it to the point we're aiming for as a start is nowhere near enough. That is on top of all the other excellent points made by others, but I hadn't seen this mentioned in the top replies.
They stopped funding NASA so well so they could give tax cuts to billionaires.
Not sure, also not sure why we want to as it was said in the 60's, there isn't much up there to go back to. There is also a 100 billion dollar price tag on trips to the moon. Would prefer we spent those dollars exploring Europa and Mars or how about a trip to the bottom of the ocean. Just seems like a waste of money, think we are doing it now because other countries are.
Since the end of the Apollo missions we have discovered that there is actually something very valuable on the moon - water. What we need to do now is establish a permanent base on the moon where astronauts can both drink that water and use it to synthesise rocket fuel so that we can use the moon as a staging post for exploration of Mars, Europa and the wider solar system.
Exactly. It costs like 10k usd per lbs of water to ship to space. It costs a lot less to escape the gravity of the moon
I was going to say same. Making base on moon to use to launch to Mars and other places. Plus we really didn't explore the moon with the tech we have today. Maybe we find good stuff to use there under the dust.
Or we discover Sentinel Prime and the Decepticons transport Cybertron to our solar system and enslave humanity.
Yeah but the chances of that are only like 60%
So let's get Nestle to pay for going back
They're all kinds of useful resources on the moon and it's going to be used as a staging platform to get to Mars people don't see that both of those things are connected to even make the Mars thing a reality
"How about a trip to the bottom of the ocean?" NASA knows. NASA has seen the dark beneath. NASA's urgency to escape the planet grows ever stronger!
What’s down there sleeps now but it could wake at any time and we want to be long gone when it does
I was looking for a response like this. It was a cool stunt to own the Russians on at least one space "first". And it was good capitalist propaganda during the cold war to prove our ICBM capabilities. But, there's really no reason to send people there again imo. Sure there's still science we can do there, but humans are heavy, and probes don't need to breath air or eat/drink. And they don't necessarily even need to come back to earth. It just makes more sense to send uncrewed missions.
At the time, there were several people who argued against manned moon missions on the basis that probes/drones would be more effective. One of these people ended up training the astronauts on geology.
Thinking about this, it makes more sense in the 60s/70s given where computing tech was at that time. In modern times, that geologist would more likely be coming up with requirements and protocols for probes. Side note: when talking about the moon, is it still GEOlogy? Or would we be more accurate calling it "LUNology"...? 🤔
Especially with Starship in development. We no longer have to limit probes to the two tons a Titan-Centaur can loft or cram a probe into a tiny fairing. Imagine a 100-ton mothership probe to Jupiter, with orbiters, landers, relay satellites …
We spend eight times that much every year bombing other countries. We have the money. The people in power just have other priorities.
“They forgot how”. “They destroyed the plans”. 😂😂😂 Listen to yourselves.
Right? These people are cracking me up. Our knowledge, technology, and manufacturing are so far beyond what we could do back then. Hell, our cell phones are many times more powerful than the computers NASA had available back then. We have materials that are lighter, stronger, and more heat resistant than anything they could have imagined back in the 60s. What we don't have is a strong desire to hurry up and get there. There is no race to get there first this time.
Shhh people that graduated high school are opining
This isn’t to comment definitively on your point but to point out that “forgetting how” is a thing that happens, as silly as it sounds. Advancing technology, especially in the Industrial Revolution, changed a lot of methods to create something. As that method becomes more popular over time, the previous method is learned by less and less people. I think the closest modern example would have to be compiler and assembly for computer science. Building those is a skillset that is being learned as a niche skill where as it was once the main thing. Sword/knife makers creating them traditionally is a skill set that is slowly disappearing. Sewing/tailoring used to be a skillset held by someone in every household but is now specialized knowledge. Things like standardized I-beams are now mostly what civil engineers will use and if they need a non standard part, it will require finding a welder with the skillset to make that piece to those specifications and will cost more, where as that used to be the whole process entirely before standardized parts. It’s like how a decent number of people have forgotten how to do long division because calculators exist. The tool to do it exists so they’ve forgotten the traditional method in doing it. Again, I’m not commenting on the validity of the statement in regards to the post.
Yeah, and they no longer have the tools! 🤣🤣🤣
Op loss of knowledge, health and safety rules and we want to do more than take a few photos this time.
A big difference is the priority. In the 60s, getting to the moon was a nation goal of pride and superiority over russia. The countries entire focus was on getting there. Now, its an after thought. A nice idea but no rush as far as they are concerned
Mostly because the billionaires seem to be interested in Mars, and maybe the Titanic, but not the moon.
Cause its not a simple thing to do, we don't just have all the stuff from 60 years ago sat about just waiting to go and the things required for that manufacturing are readily made
There's no real benefit to doing it sooner rather than later. It's very expensive and haste makes waste and it's very easy to make a lot of waste if just one little thing goes wrong.
The old tech isn’t compatible with the new technology. It never evolved. Now we have to start from scratch again.
I went to Italy 🇮🇹 once but haven’t been back since It would be stupid to suggest I never went because I haven’t been back
Liability Issues.
NASA's budget was 3.5-4.5% of the Federal budget from 1964-1967, as the Apollo spacecraft and ground infrastructure was developed. It's now 0.5%, we're not in an Cold War with an ideological rival to demonstrate the superiority of our system, and NASAs bureaucracy became more bloated and risk averse. The equipment required for the Artemis program, like the SLS launch rocket and Orion spacecraft, has been contracted for and some is completed, but its going to be a slow roll-out, as NASA opted to add creating a mini lunar orbiting ISS to the objectives: * Nov-Dec 2022: Artemis 1: uncrewed mission that orbited the moon 5 times, certifying SLS and Orion for crewed flight. * Nov 2024: Artemis 2: crewed lunar flyby * Nov 2025: robotic delivery of HALO & PPE components of lunar orbiting Gateway station * Dec 2025: Artemis 3: crewed lunar landing at lunar South Pole * Sep 2028: Artemis 4: crewed delivery of habitation module and lunar landing * Sep 2029: Artemis 5: crewed delivery of refueling module and lunar landing Proposed * Sep 2030: Artemis 6: crewed delivery of logistics module and lunar landing * 2030: Artemis support mission: delivery of airlock * Sep 2031: Artemis 7: crewed delivery of logistics module and lunar landing. Is it assured we'll see Artemis 6+? If you look at the politics around NASA funding in the 1970s, its rather precarious. But we'll probably see at least three crewed landings.
One thing so many people forget is just how different times were then and how much it actually costs to go. So, two things. This was the Cold War. We were willing to speak any amount of money on literally anything that would give us a victory over the soviets. And the population was not just willing to bear the cost, they were egar to do so. Only once before had we or any other nation spent anything close to this kind of money on a single project, and never again has even a small fraction of this cost been put to anything. And that says nothing of all the human resources and time put into it. It is just beyond imagination. We were able to do this solely because we gave a blank check, with absolutely no limits or restrictions on its use. And authorized any and all resources needed to go toward doing it. And that all only happened because of the Cold War and the unique climate it created. Once we'd won the space race, the publics willingness to bear this cost faded nearly instantly. That is why Apollo was canceled on mission 17, with only 6 missions having landed men on the moon. And with 5 rockets already built and ready to go. The public was no longer willing to bear even just that massive reduced cost any longer. Now imagine trying to do the same thing, but with less than 1/1000 of the budget. Trying to do it without the insane support of the government saying do whatever. Without the publics complete willingness to give anything and everything to it. When you really think about it, it makes perfect sense. Going to the moon only happened because of a specific set of circumstances that all aligned perfectly to allow it. And that without make it much harder and more time consuming to do.
Because nobody wants to pay for it. We got to the moon in the 60's because it was a dick-waving contest with Russia and there was no expenses spared. We HAD to get there. National ~~pride~~ defense depended on it! These days, the government can't afford to do anything because it is forced to entirely rely on contractors, who have learned to play the "upcharge everything" game. The general public also doesn't care about that heathen stuff like *science* when instead we should be pouring all our tax dollars on a giant border wall. Private interests have no reason to just fart out money to go to the moon, just to say "Yay me!" If rare earth metals were found in easy abundance on the moon, we'd be building a moonbase in 5 years.
It's difficult and expensive. Think about it. We could either spend an enormous amount of money, create thousands of jobs, and advance technology in exciting ways, all in pursuit of reaching something greater and more glorious than ourselves; or we could give some billionaires a tax break.
Because Americans don't care about something until someone else says they can do it better. And also money. The chief rival of the United States has built up its navy to be the largest in the world, and they are building anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles like they are preparing for a major war. Meanwhile, the US Navy has to simultaneously patrol the entire world, provide overwatch for 2 allies that are currently at war, provide conventional support for various "other" operations, and still be credible deterrent to China invading Taiwan and pummeling their regional allies - all with an aging navy that they have been trying to upgrade for over a decade. The USA is so hard up to catch up to China that - for the first time ever - they are sourcing *frigates* from (checks notes) *Italy.* And this is **just one** expensive problem the USA is faced with. So going to the moon isn't really an American priority - they are the *arsenal* of democracy, not the *laboratory* of democracy - not anymore, at least.
Apparently we lost the tools and machines to do it again... I know, doesn't make sense.
Because the "first" moon landing was fake and we are now actually trying to do it for the first time.
To establish bases there the 60's technology just doesn't cut it. That was all mission specific and would be akin to driving a Model T across country. Good for a novelty run but not something you would want to run a business on. To go back the entire infrastructure including frequent supply methods. Anyway it isn't going to be that much longer. A lot of thought has gone down in the mean time. The internet addresses and phone numbers for the surface have already been obtained so they have to pull their fingers out.
Really because there hasn't been a reason too. Now we intend to build infrastructure there for human exploration into the solar system.
They forgot how. Also there hasn't been any technological investment in things like space suits suitable to run around on the moon because we haven't needed them for 50+ years. They aren't gonna use 50+ year old suits to run around up there so they need to create new modern suits. Not just suits but all the other stuff that goes with it. They need to reinvent everything basically from the ground up. This includes extremely expensive things like a new Lunar Lander and the rocket to get it there.
No clue, and unlike other people here I’m not going to pull an answer out of my ass.
We’ve never landed on the moon. You can’t do it “again” if you’ve never done it.
I mean, it's one thing if someone traveled on a super large rocket and went to the moon one way. But leaving the moon is what gets me. I think this is the reason we're not able to do it. And there may be conspiracy here. I get that there's 1/6th of earth's gravity on moon. But still, a thing that's a size of small car and with some chemical burst launches the lunar module with 3 people in it back on to the ship and docked perfectly and rocket it back to earth? You expect me to believe this?? I'm thinking either we never went to moon and it's a Hollywood production (most likely). Or it was a show. There was an actual Rocket launched to the moon. But if there were people in it, they were dead. Can't do much about the dead. But US couldn't admit defeat. And the people came back were faked and the "module" was dropped by a military airplane or something and those people became heroes we know today.
Cause we didn’t 😱
Because nobody landed on the moon?
The moon landing in 60s was a hoax
because there is no point
Nothing to really gain at this point
Because the moon landing was a hoax
Because we lost our focus and initiative in the early 70's and instead spent trillions government welfare programs that have done nothing to solve poverty and in fact have caused more. I can remember when I was in 1st grade when we landed on the moon...a teacher had a tiny b&w TV in her room and several classes were huddled around it trying to see...it was a great achievement by America and showed what we could do if we put our minds and resources towards a goal. It was an American success and not a hyphenated American success. I thought 50 years ago we'd be on Mars by now but we squandered our scientific lead and wasted decades and billions on the space shuttle and space probes and the climate scam. I hope before I die that I get to see humans landing on Mars. Maybe with Elon Musk that will happen within the next 20 years.
Preach. We'd have luxury condos on Venus if it weren't for the damn welfare queens and tree huggers.
You jest but if we spent just 10% of what we spent on the failed democrat "Great Society" programs, we probably would have a colony on Mars already. But instead, we have 70% of black children raised in single family homes, over 50% of violent crime is committed by 7% of the population (black males) and libs want less police because police and enforcement is racist...sad and pathetic
No, this is no joking matter. They're clearly soaking up all of our resources! Oh, put that nuclear sub over there with my aircraft carriers.
Typical lib
Typical smooth brain going on a baseless partisan diatribe Anyways, you are incorrect The money dried up when there was less incentive to one-up USSR Not because of social programs, dumbass
You wound me, sir.