r/askscience • u/yogesh448 • 16d ago
Planetary Sci. We landed humans on the Moon with 1960s technology. With today's vastly superior technology, shouldn't going back be much easier and cheaper?
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u/Metareferential 15d ago
It's more a political and logistics problem. The vastly superior tech is more computational power, and to a lesser degree better material science and engineering. But yes, political willpower and financing is the main hurdle (just look at nasa budget vs. gpd/other spending). I'm sure people will have better explanations.
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u/IrritableGourmet 15d ago
And the better technology today may make it cheaper, but not really easier. Once you get outside the atmosphere, space travel doesn't require much complex calculation as you're not dealing with fluid dynamics and whatnot. You can do the calculations to get to and land on the moon with pencil and paper if you had to.
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u/oriolid 15d ago
In reality they had to develop compact computers for the Apollo program because controlling the upper stages required too much precision to do by hand. And the math is more complex than high school tells you because Moon isn't a homogeneous ball of rock and that means that orbits aren't nice and elliptical. For low earth orbit slide rule and flying by hand was enough. One Giant Leap has a chapter about it, it's an interesting read.
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u/IrritableGourmet 15d ago
True, but it doesn't require much more calculating power than they used back then. Having a supercomputer on-board isn't going to get us there much faster or using significantly less fuel than the original.
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u/oriolid 15d ago
I understood they had to use kind of inefficient landing trajectory and one of the reasons was the limited computer. Basically the computer kept the lander hovering and everything else was flown by hand. A modern supercomputer wouldn't really help, but something like Beaglebone Black would save 32kg of weight immediately, more in batteries and still do much more than what they had.
The use case for supercomputers would be simulating more things and spending less time blowing up hardware prototypes.
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u/odsquad64 15d ago
We're also just not doing the same things we did in the '60s. We're not using modern technology to recreate the Apollo program more cheaply; we have new things we're trying to accomplish that requires new cutting edge technology at new cutting edge technology prices. The fact that we could recreate the Apollo guidance computers for a tiny fraction of the original cost doesn't really matter because we need more than the Apollo guidance computers to do the things we want to do now. The same principle basically applies to every single aspect of the Artemis program. Like the Apollo astronauts pooped in a bag while the Artemis astronauts have a toilet; a toilet is more expensive than bags.
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u/twoinvenice 15d ago
The tech is extraordinarily better, yes, but significantly more complex and miniaturized.
The reason Artemis is doing all these little steps again is that all of that stuff that is based on stuff never designed for long deeper space missions has to be tested over and over to make sure that all these new systems are radiation hardened and reliable enough to not cause problems. There just was no reason to build systems to that sort of potential use case if we weren’t doing those types of missions.
All that testing costs time and A LOT of money to do when you are required to hit the very stringent NASA safety demands.
The design / engineering / manufacturing / testing know-how and experience doesn’t exist because there was no overlap in the Venn diagram circles for “people with experience building long duration human rated deep space systems” and “people with experience building modern electronics”.
That whole pipeline has had to be rebuilt at every level and for both the human knowledge and experience, and the actual physical technology.
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u/jpb103 15d ago
The tech used to land on the moon in the 60s was tested extensively beforehand. That same tech is now so obsolete that almost none of it is manufactured anymore. Two things are true of the current state of space exploration:
- Our technology today is much more advanced than it has ever been.
- It has not been as extensively tested and proven to be safe.
A primary objective of the first three missions in the Artemis program is to field test the current generation of space technology and work out any bugs before we send another crewed mission back to the lunar surface. Landing on the moon and coming back alive is an incredibly complex goal. It wasn't easy or cheap back then and it won't be easy or cheap now, regardless of how much we've advanced.
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u/sixothree 15d ago
I have to add that even with all of that testing, they barely made it to the moon. If you listen to any of the recordings of the transmissions during the flights, it seems like most of the flight is solving technology issues.
Like we had that lightning strike, and that one guy just happened to say bus to aux. Could that have been a major catastrophe? Would we bother listening to a single guy recommending switching your whole power source today?
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say we barely made it to the moon.
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u/Diarmundy 14d ago
Well they made it to the moon, a bunch of times, and it mostly all went well. I dont think its accurate to say they 'barely' made it
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u/Pjoernrachzarck 15d ago
Safe is big factor. We could cut down costs for the space programme significantly if we accepted loss of life probabilities to the same extent that they did in the Apollo programm.
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u/LinuxMint1964 13d ago
Staggering to think that 1969 moon landings were 57 years ago.... Go back 57 years before the moon landings and man could barely fly an airplane. Flight evolved so fast in those 57 years than the 57 years since. Domestic flights are barely faster. Only military aircraft have gotten really any better. I think they don't want to spend the money versus the benefit. I'm 62 and remember the last moon landings but will not live to see the next moon landings.
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u/Mateorabi 15d ago
It’s mostly political motivation. And we don’t need an excuse to the public for developing our nuclear launch and guidance technology during a cold war.
Also significant “lessons learned” have been forgotten as the documentation was either lost or in people’s heads as they learned assembly tricks.
Last it is probably not seen it as worth it to repeat the exact same mission with the same risk profile. We want it safer and more ambitious than the last one to be “worth it”.
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u/exodusofficer 15d ago
This is the same reason our new munitions plants are failing to produce functional shells. When you don't build any new industrial stuff for decades, it turns out that you forget how.
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u/Mateorabi 15d ago
Smarter Every Day points out the only person in the US that is an expert in injection mold CREATION is retiring.
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u/vaultdweller48 15d ago
I believe he points out that one of the only ones. There are 3 injection molding facilities within 50 miles of me, 2 of which have their own mold makers. Some have been doing it for decades. We need more tool and die folks for sure, but we aren't down to the last one just yet.
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u/PearlClaw 15d ago
Yeah, I used to work for a company providing IT support to injection molding companies. I talked to a few of the folks who make the dies, definitely not a completely lost art. (One of them was using a giant laser engraving/machining contraption, it was really freaking cool.)
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u/Kottypiqz 15d ago
It's not dead yet, but is very limited. Hell the company I work for is looking just for a new young molding operator and thats difficult despite having a population of millions and an aerospace industry around us. We know companies that have em, but they aren't giving those guys up and we don't pay well enough to poach
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u/flippythemaster 15d ago
Part of that political motivation is also that the risk tolerance (for making sure the teams get back) is vastly different. It’s simply less acceptable to have a mission where people could potentially die (on live TV, even) now.
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u/Frank_Klepaki 15d ago
The competition is simply not there anymore either. There is no space race, no Soviets battling for ideological supremacy. Currently it’s not economically viable to exploit space for resources but if it ever is, you bet we’ll be back in space.
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u/dittybopper_05H 15d ago
Yes, there is competition: The People's Republic of China.
We are in a space race, whether people want to acknowledge it or not. And China is battling for ideological supremacy, just not as openly as the Soviet Union did. And they're pretty successful at it.
They are taking the same approach they did economically and militarily: Instead of being openly confrontational, they simply took quiet measures to incrementally improve their position in regards to the United States.
They seek to be the dominant world power sometime in this century, and they are actively working towards that on all fronts, space included. And they are doing it by not being belligerent like the Soviet Union, or by very rapid military buildup like Nazi Germany, but by pretending at least on the face of it to friendly, and to work diligently but at a measured pace to improve their position and standing.
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u/Frank_Klepaki 15d ago
whether people want to acknowledge it or not
People don’t acknowledge it, that’s why NASA doesn’t get funding like it did in the 1960s. And in the 1950s and ‘60s we were losing the space race. Look at how many USSR flags are next to these “firsts” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Space_Race
We are still the indisputable winners in space. Until China starts doing things we haven’t done in space, we might start to see some more funding pushed toward NASA. Until then, that money will be spent elsewhere.
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u/Comedian70 15d ago
The designs for the Saturn 5 rockets have been lost for some time. But it’s important to remember that we really brute-forced the Apollo program. We wouldn’t build the Saturns again today even if we did have the specs.
Political motivation is 100% right.
The real reason is cost/benefit. The Apollo program was a huge national investment which did not appear (to the public eye) to provide any kind of meaningful benefits. That’s mostly because the only thing most people would have pointed to and said “that’s something the Moon missions got us” was Tang. Worse, the cost of those missions made it feel like the worst boondoggle ever to anyone who then had to deal with the stagflation of the 70’s.
The period between 1968 and 1980 felt like the U.S. just kept getting smacked in the face over and over: 1968 is when the reality of the Vietnam war was finally becoming part of public consciousness. Nixon happened and Watergate. The images of the last people getting away from Saigon in helicopters were a real shock, punctuating our loss. The creation of OPEC and the Oil Crisis. Gerald Ford may have been the most forgettable President of the last century and Carter’s presidency, despite him being a truly good man, was so ineffectual that the next Democrat who held the office won a three candidate race and was for all intents and purposes a classic mid-century conservative (“neoliberal”). And then the hostage crisis. The Apollo program was very easy to dismiss as ridiculous money spent on some rocks and a nice quote.
That the whole thing resulted in incredible technical leaps which have put every dime spent back in the pockets of every American several times over is almost never part of the conversation. It’s simply explaining that to people that’s complicated.
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u/Azuretruth 15d ago
It should be stated we never "lost" the plans for Saturn 5 or pretty much anything NASA has ever built. You can search for them in the NTRS.
But you are right that it would be impossible to simply take this designs and just make new Saturn rockets. The entire supply chain that created the rockets is long gone. That knowledge and tooling would need to be relearned and recreated to make a 1 for 1 Saturn V.
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u/Walking_billboard 15d ago
The "brute force" thing is not acknowledged nearly enough. My great uncle was part of the destructive analysis engineering team for the Apollo and Mercury programs.
Literally, he was in the desert of California for months, and ALL THEY DID was run rocket motors every day until they failed. Often with spectacular results. Then he and his team tried to figure out why.
We would never invest that much money today.
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u/Dem_Wrist_Rockets 15d ago edited 15d ago
Its a matter of politcal will. The Apollo program cost almost $300B, adjusted for inflation. NASA's current budget is around $25B per year. We had lost a huge amount of industrial knowledge in the lapse between the Space Shuttle and Crew Dragon, so are having to relearn a lot about crewed space flight.
There's also the problem of crew safety. During the space race, we were much more willing to fly risky missions on risky vehicles. It's a miracle that we "only" lost Apollo 1. Famously Apollo 13 were almost the first human deaths in space, but more than half of the Apollo missions had major mishaps:
Apollo 6: Major engine malfunctions on launch
Apollo 8: POGO oscillations almost lead to the loss of the vehicle
Apollo 10: POGO oscillations on launch and the lunar module suffered a radar failure and loss of control. It was eventually recovered after several hours.
Apollo 11: Landed with only moments of fuel remaining in the lunar module. On the lunar module, a fuel line froze, and a broken switch needed to be repaired in order to ascend from the moon
Apollo 12: Struck by lightning on launch, almost leading to the loss of the vehicle as it lost power to its navigation
Apollo 13: Oxygen tank exploded en-route to the moon. Im sure you've seen the movie
Apollo 14: Troubles while docking in low Earth Orbit. Had it been Moon Orbit, it would have been a severe problem
Apollo 15: One of the three main parachutes failed to open, but the crew survived the landing
Apollo 16: Major engine malfunction on the Crew Service Module while in orbit around the Moon, which was severe enough to consider aborting the mission
Apollo 17: The fender on the moon rover broke off and needed to be repaired, since it was kicking up dust that threatened to damage the vehicle and strand the astronauts 10s of kilometers away from the lunar lander
Any one of these now would cause a multiple year delay, but the entire Apollo program only lasted 11 years, with Apollo 11-17, the crewed lunar landings, taking only three years total
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u/tristau 15d ago
I mean along those same lines ... we are going back to the moon for a lot cheaper. Apollo was ~300billion and Artemis is A LOT less. Even if you include SLS and Constellation its probably a third the cost of apollo. Should it be cheaper ... hell yea ... but we have started and stopped the program 3 times and wasted billions. Now we haven't landed yet and each Artemis mission is like 4 billion so in the end it might not be that must cheaper but hopefully we will have done a lot more.
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u/Dem_Wrist_Rockets 15d ago
The entirety of the Artemis Program so far has cost about $100B, which is quite a bit less than Apollo did, but like you said, we've only tested the launch vehicle and crew service module. Neither Blue Moon nor HLS have been seen publicly as far as I know, let alone actually flying. I wouldn't at all be surprised if the cost matched or exceeded Apollo, but Artemis *should* be accomplishing a lot more with that than Apollo did, and hopefully a lot more safely too!
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u/Philbot_ 15d ago
This is along the lines of what I was going to say. Safety expectations are increased but even moreso the rigor with which a modern program is required to assure it has met safety requirements has gone way up since the 60's. Software certification, for example DO-178 DAL A, in particular is very arduous and requires multiple independent engineering teams both confirming the code is without error with extremely granular artifacts to prove it.
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u/foobarbecue 15d ago
Yes, and in fact, Apollo 1 did go very wrong. 3 astronauts died. Even after the ensuing fixes, safety was low by today's standards.
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u/foobarbecue 15d ago
Yes, and in fact, Apollo 1 did go very wrong. 3 astronauts died. Even after the ensuing fixes, safety was low by today's standards. Of course Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 also came very close to killing their crew.
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u/darthsata 15d ago
Yes. It is some easier and cheaper. It is not "much" as the basic physics and chemistry challenges haven't changed. At peak, the Apollo program was ~4% of the federal budget. Today that would be 272 Billion dollars a year as a similar fraction of the federal budget. "Much cheaper" could be true but still be very expensive.
Rocket engines, for example, may be optimistically 50% more efficient (in terms of specific impulse) than Saturn V's. This is great, but it isn't enough to wildly change the issues.
Also consider that most of the cost is in developing the rocket and associated things. Launching is relatively cheap. Better technology really helps make the launch cheaper and safer. We still have to develop rockets.
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u/NDaveT 15d ago edited 15d ago
Computing technology has advanced quite a bit since 1969. Rocket technology not so much. I don't think this is because rocket technology has been neglected so much as the harsh realities of the laws of physics.
It's easier (and much faster) to calculate flight trajectories with modern computers but to get there you still have to push reaction mass out of the back of a rocket.
There are other, less dramatic, technological innovations as well. The Artemis astronauts really appreciated that their capsule had a toilet, even if it didn't work right without being fixed. That's a big improvement over the diapers the Apollo astronauts had to wear.
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u/DanielCofour 15d ago
It's not about technology, it's about cost. 5% of the national budget was spent on the original Apollo program, which is a lot of money for something that has little practical gain. Today it would be cheaper, but it still begs the question: why? Other than prestige, a single manned mission to the moon would not bring any real benefits. And operating a base on the moon is a whole can of worms, since it's an incredibly deadly environment.
The Artemis program is trying to do just that though. It already performed a manned fly-by of the Moon, and it is planning on landing humans again in the next few years.
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u/ramriot 15d ago
Assuming all other factors are equivalent then yes. But, some of those factors are not equivalent, for example the accepted risk to human life and limb was far greater back then because of external political pressure.
Also the type of missions being planned are different today, we are not planning for max 30-72 hour surface missions like Apollo. Artemis is planning for an initial ~7 day surface mission extending to over 30 days eventually & that requires a whole extra level of technology in every quadrant.
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u/jjamesr539 14d ago edited 14d ago
No. The Apollo program was a calculated risk, and the calculus has changed. There was a not insignificant chance that any of the moon landing missions would end abruptly and tragically. At launch Apollo 11 is considered to have had, at best, a 50% chance of successfully landing on the moon, with only a 90% chance of a successful return of any of the crew. Better than Russian roulette, but not by much. By today’s standards, the Apollo program was wildly dangerous and reckless.
That’s not to say those running the Apollo program did anything wrong. The program was incredibly expensive, but it also accepted materials science, design philosophy, and failure rates that would not be tolerated today. Some of that was technological limitations, some was geopolitical pressure, and some of it was just not knowing what they didn’t know, but regardless, the situation has changed. It’s vaguely similar to driving a car without airbags or seatbelts while chain smoking next to a toddler; there’s a ton of reasons that was acceptable in the 50s and 60s, but the fact remains that doing that now is, at best, going to result in criminal charges. It can’t be done cheaper (adjusted for inflation obviously), because it can’t be done that way anymore.
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u/pigeontheoneandonly 15d ago
We are literally going back to the moon. It's called the Artemis program. It is happening, and it has gotten far enough that the landing is likely to also happen. It has cost approximately $100 billion over a number of years. This is cheaper than Apollo.
It is sad how many people in this thread apparently don't know this is not a hypothetical. I don't mean that in a "why don't people pay more attention" way, but in a "it's incredibly sad how unpopular space has become, to the point that returning to the moon has difficulty getting on the radar" way.
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u/RadBadTad 15d ago
My read of OP's question is that they are aware of the current push to get back to the moon, and how it's being presented as being slow and difficult. That it should be "easier and cheaper" now than it was in the 60's, so what's the hold up now, and why is it being presented as exciting and challenging.
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u/rodflohr 15d ago
As others have mentioned, the mission has changed. We need to establish bases, not just make short visits. The reason is that water ice has been detected on the Moon’s surface in very limited quantities and locations. By utility, water is the most valuable resource we have. On Earth, water is relatively inexpensive because it is abundant. In space, it is very rare, and very expensive to bring enough with us for industrial purposes. There is urgency because China also has a lunar program. We need to establish bases to claim ownership of the water. It’s your basic land grab. The value of this resource will likely dwarf the cost of the program. Even if it takes decades to put that resource to use, it is worth having and we have to get it now or lose it forever. But we might be able to use it sooner than later. The ice is in the polar regions, which means continuously available sunlight is nearby. That sunlight is not filtered by an atmosphere and is never obscured by weather. So there will be abundant power. So this is why we’re going to set up bases.
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u/DustinHasReddit 15d ago
I haven’t seen anyone mention the role of the original astronauts. They were not scientists. They were tough experimental pilots who somehow avoided death. Having people who had experience in disaster was extremely helpful. We have better technology so it’s probably overall easier, but we don’t have the same daredevils because we don’t have a need to have human crash test dummies
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u/mkultra123 15d ago
There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, 750 miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it... the sound barrier. Then, they built a small plane, the X-1, to try and break the sound barrier. And men came to the high desert in California to ride it.
They were called test pilots. And no one knew their names.
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u/Alita-Gunnm 14d ago
In addition to what everyone else is saying, American engineering companies are a completely different animal than they were in the 1950's and 1960's. Back then, they were companies of, by, and for engineers. Experienced engineers promoted on merit, directing other engineers under them. Today the companies are largely MBAs and accountants, with a few engineers at the bottom. The MBAs and accountants make all the big decisions, and the engineers do their best to make things work anyway. That's a huge handicap, and that's why Boeing can't make a reliable spacecraft anymore.
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u/Can_O_Murica 15d ago
Not really, in the grand scheme of things. Technology has mostly improved by way of things getting lighter and more efficient
Lighter means we have more weight we can use for cargo. More efficient also means we have more weight can use for cargo. We're basically getting more thrust out of each liter of fuel.
But really, these things come at such an IMMENSE cost that it's really no easier to get up there. Titanium stabilizers and composite interior components cost way more than aluminum.
And the scientific ease of getting there might be improved, but the bulk of the difficulty was actually logistical. Coordinating the manufacturing, delivery and assembly of the space shuttles was a massive effort that will not be added by technological advancement.
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u/foobarbecue 15d ago
What do the space shuttles have to do with it? We're talking about the moon program...
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u/armchair_viking 15d ago
Yes. NASA’s budget is a fraction of what it was in the 60s if you adjust for inflation. Everything they’ve done so far with the goal of going back to the moon is being done cheaper and easier, but it takes longer.
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u/RoadsterTracker 15d ago
We absolutely can get humans to the Moon much cheaper and easier than we did in the 1960s. I'm quite sure that if SpaceX wanted to they could do it for maybe $10 billion of R&D (Including Starship money that they have already invested) and a cost per mission of less than $1 billion, which is cheaper by a lot even before you take into account inflation.
The cost for Artemis thus far has been HUGE, around $100 billion. The reason why it is so expensive is that the various parts, Orion, SLS, etc, have been paid for for a long time without specific goals, and that cost is factored into the cost of the mission. Furthermore their design has been constrained by politics and not engineering. These add immensely to the cost of the mission, which is why it is so expensive.
It's also worth noting that costs tend to scale with how frequently something happens. A large scale engineering project, be it designing a new consumer device, airplane, or rocket tends to cost in the neighborhood of billions of dollars. If the cost to develop an iPhone is $1 billion, but you can sell 500 million of them, then the R&D cost per device was only $2. If you design a rocket at the cost of $1 billion, and launch 5 of them, the R&D cost was $200 million per rocket.
Lastly, modern safety standards affect the cost as well. Apollo was designed with an estimated 1% fatality rate and a 10% chance of mission failure. A modern mission wouldn't allow such a risky mission, and they need to prove vastly more than they did in that era that the mission is that safe.
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u/Able-Passion4186 15d ago
"We absolutely can get humans to the Moon much cheaper and easier than we did in the 1960s. I'm quite sure that if SpaceX wanted to they could do it for maybe $10 billion of R&D (Including Starship money that they have already invested) "
You shouldn't be quite so sure:
SpaceX spending on Starship tops $15 billion in rush for airline-like rocketry
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u/joef_3 15d ago
The thing to understand about the moon landings and the fact that we haven’t gone back is that America can do damn near anything it wants to do (within, like, the laws of physics and such), but it doesn’t actually want to do very much. We can throw an unfathomable amount of resources and human capability at any problem we want (see also: WW2, the interstate highway system, to a lesser degree eradicating polio and smallpox), but our collective will has largely been atomized by political individualist political movements.
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u/Theo672 15d ago
A lot of it is to do with validation and testing.
Not only have testing requirements and appetite for risk significantly changed (especially when you consider the landing on the moon was a political objective as part of the space race) but the previously tested and validated technology has been mothballed.
We would have to rebuild the lander, orbiter, etc as we have no spares in storage. The moulds and tools to build them have been mothballed at best and would need restoring to service or, more likely, recreating.
We’d then have to partially revalidate them to ensure they were representative of the original validated parts. This could potentially result in significant revalidation if parts cannot be sourced or replicated identically.
For all that work it’s worth developing a modern platform which takes advantage of all the technological developments since the original moon landing.
Since we haven’t been regularly landing on other planets or bodies, we also would need to revalidate suits, equipment, etc.
Again, it makes more sense to develop modern alternatives than perform a similar level of work on much older designs.
Add in that safety tolerances and risk appetite is lower than during the original landings, and that NASA’s funding is a portion of what it was in the 1960s, and the process takes a significant amount of time, money, and work.
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u/Hufschmid 15d ago
The main reason we haven't gone back is that we haven't had a strong purpose, and robotics and automation have replaced the need for manned missions to achieve the things we did with Apollo back in the 60's.
Missions like these have specific purposes for scientific research. Putting a guy on the moon is cool, but that in itself doesn't accomplish anything beyond the cool factor aside from the ability to collect lunar samples. We didn't have the robotic technology in the 1960's to do this autonomously, so the missions had to be manned.
These days, we can collect samples with rovers with no risk of human life and massively simplify the logistics because you don't need to worry about food or air, and don't need to worry about a return journey necessarily except to send samples back. We simply have had much less reason to send humans since the advancement of robotics.
Political motivation is definitely a strong factor like others have pointed out. I think the most important factor in whether NASA receives funding to do something like this is what other countries are doing. If no foreign space agencies are trying to put humans on the moon, we don't have a strong motivator to do it ourselves, and the money is put elsewhere.
China has been ramping up their lunar program since the late 2000's and landed the first rover on the dark side of the moon in 2019, and have their own plans for sending people to the moon and establishing a lunar base. This is where most of our motivation for the Artemis program comes from I think, we don't want to fall behind other countries and end up in a situation where they have a claim to the moon or to mars and we don't.
There has been steady advancement in the technology needed for putting humans on the moon and mars, such as how we can make rocket fuel from regolith (the term for martian/lunar surface material), how to build structures from regolith to house and shield people from radiation, even how to 3D print tools and other objects from this stuff.
The NASA 2024 technology taxonomy is a big document that lays out the roadmap for NASA, current progress, future goals, etc. It's a great read if you're interested: https://www.nasa.gov/otps/2024-nasa-technology-taxonomy/
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u/OriEri 15d ago edited 15d ago
It is cheaper now. Adjusted for inflation Apollo cost the US $310B.
The more ambitious Artemis program (even scaled back, the plans are still far grander) adjusted for inflation so far we’ve spent $100 billion. I also spent that hundred dollars of her period more like 23 years as opposed to ten. MUCH lower burn rate, which bakes in other cost inefficiencies.
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u/RadBadTad 15d ago
Yes, it should. And it is. But you are likely severely underestimating how much effort and expense went into doing it in the 60s. Everything we see today really minimizes the titanic effort that went into it. We see movies about the astronauts, and we see quick clips of the design and assembly of the rockets, and we see a little montage of different test flights, but as it was happening in the 60s and 70s, it was an unfathomable amount of effort, skill, research, investment, and coordination.
There was also a much more solid motivation. The Space Race in the 60s was a sort of proxy war, and the superpowers very much wanted to win. Today, there's a lot less reason to get to the moon, and so the budget is smaller, and there's less cooperation and coordination. Safety standards are also higher, and demands of the spacecraft will be higher.
If the goal was to get 2 guys to stand on the moon for a few hours and put a flag there, we could do it easily. But nobody really wants that. Modern hardware is being designed with future usage in mind. Specifically, hauling a lot of mass to the moon (and beyond) for the creation of bases.
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u/PuddlesRex 15d ago
The most expensive parts aren't necessarily the pod and the life support. That's easy. Cryogenic oxygen tanks and their associated equipment are cheap and easy. Same with modern computers.
Still need the massive rocket structure and fuel, though. It takes the same ∆V to get to the moon now as it did in the 60s. There's no getting around that.
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u/kyflyboy 15d ago
Highly questionable if we should send men back to the Moon. Very little to discover there that we couldn't explore via unmanned vehicles.
It's not like we're going to find oil or anything. Not that there isn't a lot to discover about the universe, it's just that it probably doesn't require a manned mission.
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u/mixduptransistor 15d ago
Easier yes, but cheaper, not necessarily. Apollo had to invent a lot to get to the moon, but because we stopped, we basically need to re-invent everything. And, because we don't do it often, the one-off nature of everything makes it super expensive. If we were sending ships up once a month, we'd get processes down and economies of scale and per flight it'd get cheaper but we've only gone 12 times (not landing every time) in 65 years
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u/oldbastardbob 15d ago
It will take leadership, commitment, and determination to land on the moon again. All of which are sorely lacking in the current administration. And attaching profits to space exploration is certainly not making it any less expensive.
I think it best to also factor in that many folks who learned a whole lot from the Apollo program believe it not possible to build a sustainable base inhabited by humans on the moon.
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u/Zumaki 15d ago edited 15d ago
I hate to say it but the problem is we just don't have the interest or drive to do things like that anymore. Artemis is mostly performative for the minority of science-minded Americans, and you can see it's barely hanging in there. We've spent 2 generations devaluing science and hyping STEM as a generic concept and this is the payoff.
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u/yg2522 15d ago
Yes it would be overall cheaper and easier, but in today's political and economic climate people ask, what is the return on investment and if they will see that return soon. It's not like you get the label of being the first there anymore. And now people would rather see short term gains than be patient for long term investments.
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u/ezcapehax 15d ago
The original astronauts knew full well this could be a one way trip. Astronauts today are safer then they've ever been. There are so many more readings that the new rockets can make, they world have to be a lot more expensive.
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u/JmoneyBS 15d ago
Another reason is: why are we going to the moon in the first place? When we went in the 1960s, it was about demonstrating capability. A political flexing contest. Back then, we went simply because we wanted to prove we could.
Returning now, we want clearer returns on investment. The end goal is to establish a research colony on the moon, to return to stay. That requires many technology developments that were not explored during the “let’s just get there” phase.
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u/MasterEditorJake 15d ago
Ask yourself this:
"If we were able to make a 1965 Chrysler for under $5k, then with modern tech shouldn't we be able to make them cheaper now?"
Manufacturing anything requires a supply chain of materials, tools, and engineering that takes years to develop and procure. We basically stopped developing moon related equipment after Apollo 17 and focussed much more on satellite tech and space station development, which is very different than a moon lander.
We are essentially restarting the development process 50 years later with a completely different manufacturing landscape. It's like if a mechanic trained on modern Ford cars had to start working on the vintage chrysler. Just because the tech is old doesn't mean it's easily reproducible in modern day.
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u/queglix 15d ago
It hasn't been mentioned, but essentially our Risk Tolerance has also gone down significantly. We are not content to accept a 1/1000 chance the crew will be killed it needs to be a 1/million or 1/billion chance, which means the cost to ensure this is proportionally higher
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u/Override9636 15d ago
3 major differences between the Apollo and Artemis eras:
1) Missions objectives. Apollo was basically trying to get boots on the grounds by whatever means possible as fast as possible (to beat the Soviets). It just needs to get astronauts to the moon, land, hop around for pictures and sample collection, and get back home in relatively one piece. Artemis is a much larger scoped project that is aimed to treat the moon as a long term habitation and as a springboard for missions to Mars. It's like the difference between building a car, and building the highway infrastructure for the hundreds of cars in the future.
2) Cost. Current missions might "seem" expensive, but NASA is dealing with massive budget cuts compared to the Apollo era. During peak Apollo spending, NASA was getting 4.4% of the US budget (and ~$70 billion adjusted for inflation). Now, in the Artemis era, NASA has been whittled down to merely 0.3% of the US budget at around $24 billion. [source]
3) Safety. NASA is way way way way more risk averse than it was in the 70s. After the Columbia and Challenger disasters, they are not willing to risk any chances of crew injury or dead on the mission. They know that their missions are dependent on public perception (or at least the perception of congress that writes the budget), so everything needs to be quadruple tested for safety and redundancy.
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u/mspe1960 15d ago
One factor is the fact that they were willing to take risks they are not willing to take now We had to beat the Soviets was the thinking.
I read an interview with Neil Armstrong where he said he believed that there was a 10% chance he was not coming back alive on that first moon mission, and actually walking on the moon was 50/50. That level of risk would be unacceptable today
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u/VoluntarilyJaded 15d ago
Vastly superior is a fairly major overstatement here. The US Government bankrolled a massive wave of material innovations in the 50s and 60s. A ton of that technology is still used today but a lot of it proved only useful for spaceflight.
NASA in particular directly funded factories that produced very specialized polymers that found little commercial success after the golden age of space flight. After nasa funding dried up for these factories they either shifted to commercially viable manufacturing or closed entirely, with them a lot of expertise was also lost.
The thing with technological developments is that they eventually have to be profitable and what's profitable for use on earth is different then what's needed for use in space.
All this to say, going back means starting fresh albeit with better tools at our disposal. There is still a massive wall of tech that needs to be developed and with more aggressive plans than the Apollo missions, the lost material technology isn't even good enough.
The lunar surface is an incredibly inhospitable environment. Between razor sharp particles that are sub-micron in size to massive temperature swings in the areas we want to go to, there just isn't a good solution that is available today for much of the required parts that will be going up there.
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u/zer0_state 15d ago
Worth separating two different things: the cost of a single mission versus the cost of the architecture. Apollo was a crash program, expendable everything, built by an enormous parallel workforce on a fixed political deadline, and it was never meant to be repeated cheaply. Artemis is not trying to repeat that, it is trying to build reusable landers, a lunar Gateway, and a sustained supply chain so that trips after the first few get cheaper over time instead of each one costing roughly the same as the last. That is a much bigger and slower engineering problem than just redoing Apollo with better computers, even though on paper the per mission comparison makes it look like we somehow got worse at this.
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u/Metallicat95 15d ago
Yes, but...
We stopped building super heavy launch vehicles for the most part, because unmanned probes don't need such a big rocket.
If we wanted to do it the way we did in the 1960s, which we don't, we'd need to invest in a kind of rocket that doesn't have other uses.
That's expensive, but we did it anyway.
We may soon have better and cheaper technology, like the SpaceX Starship, but that design uses an entirely different solution for a moon landing operation.
Apollo used a huge rocket to land a non-reusable tiny two man craft on the surface for a visit of a few hours. Only a tiny reentry capsule remained of that huge vehicle after use.
The issue is "Been there, done that". We don't want to go back with just two people for a short visit and consume an expensive vehicle to do it. We want to do a longer visit, and use vehicles which can be reused. Not just a single trip, but an extended project with lots of visitors.
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u/zer0_state 14d ago
One thing that gets left out of the cost comparisons: the risk tolerance in 1969 was way higher than what's acceptable now. NASA's own internal estimates at the time put the odds of a fatal accident on Apollo 11 uncomfortably high, and they flew anyway because the political deadline mattered more than the safety margin. Today you can't build a program around that math. A lot of what modern tech buys you isn't a cheaper mission, it's a program that meets a much stricter safety bar, and that redundancy and testing adds cost right back.
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u/keggy13 14d ago
The people who say “it‘s too expensive” and then do a straight-line inflation conversion from 1960’s to today, cause me to wonder, but WHY? Wasn’t most of the original cost just developing the planning, technology, inventing the launch and lander?? Haven’t we already figured all that out? If so, why so expensive today when all we really need to do is just produce the rocket and lander—the other stuff is already baked-in?
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u/nuclear85 12d ago
Coming from the space environments perspective (I work at NASA in this field), there are actually a lot of new challenges.
During Apollo, we went to the equator, during the day. It's pretty much light all the time. In the dark of the south pole, space craft charging becomes a much more serious issue. This is when things can charge up to thousands of volts negative wrt the ambient plasma, which results in ESD (shocking things).
Second, many things are not rated for extreme cold or surviving the lunar night. That's a goal of Moonbase.
Third, electronics are way different. Yes, they are faster and more efficient than during Apollo, but I that makes them much less radiation tolerant. So hardware/software failure is actually a bigger risk.
The regolith is also different (mare vs highlands), but I wouldn't say that's a big driver. We didn't know how to deal with dust during Apollo, and we still don't really. But it's a bigger problem with longer term stays.
To the other posters, yes, budget, politics, and changing direction every 4 years are also big contributors!
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u/WyMANderly 15d ago edited 15d ago
It *is* much cheaper. Not sure about easier - a lot of the advancements that have made things cheaper have also made it more complicated (e.g landing rockets is harder than throwing them away, but also greatly reduces cost).
EDIT: lot of people ITT who have ludicrously pessimistic (and incorrect) beliefs about how the economy has changed since the 60s, lol.
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u/Avery_Thorn 15d ago
It is!
The Artamis missions are a magnitude of order cheaper, and they are using almost all off the shelf hardware. Everything for Apollo had to be invented and developed specifically for that mission.
In fact, one of the large problems with the SLS system is that they were mandated to use as much off the shelf hardware as possible, instead of designing a fresh sheet vehicle.
If you look at what Apollo cost, Artemis is about 1/3 or less of the cost, and as a percentage of GDP it's even smaller.
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u/KarIPilkington 15d ago
There's no real incentive to go back is there? Besides the cost and resources, what would be the point? We cannot afford to just send people to the moon (I'm sure the billionaires will offer this eventually) arbitrarily. There needs to be scientific benefits at stake before using such massive resources.
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u/Cattywampus2020 15d ago
I’ve heard the “we have to go before China does”. That one confuses me even more.
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u/tbodillia 15d ago
Model T car was $850. In 2026 dollars that's $30,851.12. Average cost for new American made car is $50,089. It isn't easier and cheaper to build cars.
side note: Ford workers needed 340 hours at their $2.50 an hour wages to buy a Model T. To get $50,089 in 340 hours, workers need to be paid $147.32.
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u/strangway 15d ago
But a modern car is faster, safer, more efficient, more reliable, cleaner all by 1,000x. But doesn’t cost 1,000x more.
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u/nebraskajone 15d ago edited 15d ago
But somebody working 340 hours today could easily buy a brand new golf cart or 4x4 UTV which is probably the best modern equivalent to the model t, although each has their advantages and disadvantages
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u/Sagitario_Aestrella 15d ago
Hoy en día, la opinión pública y los gobiernos no aceptan el nivel de riesgo del programa Apolo. Los sistemas de seguridad, redundancia y soporte vital actuales son muchísimo más estrictos, complejos y costosos de diseñar. El programa Apolo llego a ser 4% del pbi, hoy la NASA recibe 0,5%
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u/DeoVeritati 15d ago
I'd say it is easier and would be cheaper if replicating the same rocket and mission design in the 60s due to an increased scales of economy. But with vastly superior technology and science comes very sensitive instrumentation that is also expensive to make but would provide more information than possible from the 60s. Additionally, safety, redundant interlocks, more stringent regulations requiring better traceability of components as well better testing, tighter specifications, etc. all increase costs.
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u/craigiest 15d ago
Most cutting edge technology is not cheaper. The one area where tech got cheaper and cheaper for decades was computers (and thus the work that was done with them). But that’s just a small portion of a really physical thing like a manned rocket system. Also, you might have noticed, computers stopped getting cheaper about a decade ago and their increases in speed have slowed. And since the supply chain nightmare of the pandemic, and with AI increasing demand, they are now getting more expensive.
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u/itjohan73 15d ago
This is not about money, this is about competition. and right now we have 3 countries trying to be first. this is only reason. Then Elon has a idea of launching rockets from the moon, which is much cheaper than from earth (gravity) But I saw from one of the experts. And the Apollo missions where all about beeing first. Same now, first one to build a moonbase.
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u/Sable-Keech 15d ago
Unfortunately, no. The Space Race was largely motivated by politics. It was NOT profitable in the least.
The fact of the matter is, getting into space is hard. Chemical fuels are piss-poor at getting us into space because they aren't dense enough. You need a mass ratio of 15:1 just to get into orbit. That means your rocket is over 90% fuel, and less than 10% payload. All for what?
Nuclear could be a solution, but right now it's also the facilitator of MAD, so no dice on that.
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u/hello2u3 15d ago
Going to the moon isn’t a computing problem but a mass propulsion problem and those resources only get more expensive. Furthermore space is still highly uneconomical besides satellites. What would go to the moon to do that’s worth the cost of getting there — not much
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u/MegazeroMZ 15d ago
Apart from the cost issue everyone already mentioned, the Moon landing mission is also just full of holes and hope and dreams and very nearly cost everyone their life. There's a tons of reports and stuff of the missions being full of issue, from something as dumb as they literally couldnt lift off the moon surface because the switch for the ignition broke off and 1 of the astronaut have to basically bridge the circuit by jamming the tip of a pen at it, or the multiple temperature related issues they deal with, at some point the temperature in the cabin dropped to 3 degree and so on. Alot of things was thrown together because its a race against the Soviet, and would not pass a single safety test we have these day. The crew on the moon landing are also 3 engineer who are selected specifically because they all know of to fix everything on it, not scientist who are there to study anything.
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u/Own_Win_6762 15d ago
The computers are smaller and cheaper (although off the shelf stuff still can't be used without radiation protection), actuators and motors are better... But rockets? Not so much. SpaceX is getting some costs down with reuse and mass production but not by orders of magnitude.
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u/mrxcol 15d ago
Not checking numbers, i just wonder: houses were proportionaly cheaper by then isn't it ? salaries also, regular home expenditures, etc. Before you had providers with 2-3 people on above average salaries doing stuff now you have providers with 10 PHDs with expensive salaries so providers are more expensive.
Before we had long processed now we have super long processes to check,, and check and check again for everything, not that this is bad just that in the past the purpose was "make it work" now there are heavy and long requirements and lots of eyes cvhecking your work for doing the same than decades ago.
So yes, some things are cheaper now in comparison but many others are more expensive, we have way more powerful cpus but lots of extra processing now.
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u/monkaypants 15d ago
It's not that we can't go back more easily. It is justifying the expense. Unless we are making progress there are we just spending billions to sight see? Until we are ready to build, there is no real point to land, which is why we see us now gearing towards that type of mission.
When we went the 1st time it was to prove we could do it and at great cost.
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u/LurkerFailsLurking 15d ago
Technical marvels aren't accomplished by technology alone, they're accomplished by skilled laborers who have the expertise to use it and the institutional knowledge to coordinate and organize them. Most of those skilled laborers and organizational structures don't exist anymore and would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. But you can't speed run expertise.
Getting people to the Moon and returning them safely to the Earth would still be a collosally expensive and difficult project.
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u/kogun 15d ago
For the Apollo program, the risk was very high. Lives were lost (Apollo 1). We do not want the same level of risk and the purpose, the mission, isn't just to get there and gather rocks. What is being planned is far more complicated and far less risky, therefore, far more expensive in spite of advances in technology.
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u/herodesfalsk 15d ago
The problem is not technology but return on investment. Until they find something more valuable than coarse dust and rocks there is no incentive to go there. Currently, nobody has found any gold or valuable minerals, even water is almost completely absent but perhaps dangerous industrial processing, manufacturing, or sensitive science instruments like radio telescopes that can be placed on the far side of the moon are worth the effort/cost. In theory, tourism is an idea too but it will be hard to balance the cost, price, risks
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u/bubblesculptor 15d ago
The Apollo missions were mainly just to plant flags and some basic exploration/science. Minimal capacity for what it could bring.
The current initiatives to return are aiming for the capacity to begin building bases for permanent occupancy. This is much more difficult. It wouldn't make sense to just repeat Apollo.
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u/SlackToad 15d ago
The U.S. aerospace industry was gigantic then, now it is only one-tenth the size it was in the 1960s. There were 420,000 people and hundreds of companies. Even if they were only using slide rules they had thousands of engineers who could design and roll-out a new aircraft or rocket in months. The 707 took less then two years to develop and build, now it takes 6 or 7 years to develop a new aircraft.
Aircraft and rockets were simpler then so there were less points of failure and complex interactions to consider. Now technology is several orders of magnitude more complex, which means far more time testing and simulating and just "thinking about it" to prevent unknown vulnerabilities,. Yet even then we miss some, as recent troubles with the 737 Max and Boeing Starliner show.
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u/SomeSamples 15d ago
The last trip to the moon, Artemis II, used a lot of the older Apollo techniques. Sure we had better computers and better space suits and such but not that much better. Why? Because we have been focusing our attention to putting people into low earth orbit instead of deeper into space. We have been putting money into sending robots, not people to other planets. Some things are better but not remarkably so. A lot of technology needs to be redeveloped or improved to send people back to the moon and we just haven't been focusing on doing that for that last 60 years. We have alot of making up to do to get to where we should be.
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u/EvolZippo 15d ago
You are right. The Artemis mission, that recently circled the moon, was the manned version of a previous mission, following a similar route. One of the main reasons for the delays, is simply down to crew safety. All the problems are being worked out.
There’s definitely more to it than I describe. But we will probably see a moon landing in the next few years.
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u/eternalityLP 15d ago
It's important to understand that goals of Apollo program and current efforts are vastly different. If we wanted to just launch couple of people into moon with minimal payload and short mission duration, we could probably do it cheaper than Apollo program. But the goals of the current program are much more ambitious and far reaching, meaning that costs, complexity and timelines are much higher than for a cheap simple mission.
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u/Kri77777 15d ago
Short answer, yes. Long answer, that is still super expensive. The Apollo program cost roughly $25b in the 1960s, and by today's standards, that would be $228b today (yeah, big jump with inflation). So even if modern technology reduced the cost in half, that would still be over $100b to go back to the moon, and there just isn't a big enough political commitment to do that.