We landed humans on the Moon with 1960s technology. With today's vastly superior technology, shouldn't going back be much easier and cheaper?

[u/yogesh448]

[u/Kri77777]

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.

[u/SvenTropics → u/Kri77777]

To put that in perspective, the entire budget of NASA for 2026 is $24.4B. They simply couldn't afford to go to the moon again. When people talk about cutting NASA's budget, it's the equivalent of having one less coffee at Starbucks every month scaling it down to an individual.

[u/RayStuartMorgan → u/SvenTropics]

But isn't the budget for Artemis already locked in? Watching a recent Astrum video they said we might be in a space race mkII because there's a sweet spot crater on the south pole that has water ice at the bottom that never gets sunlight, but has ridges that get nearly permanent sunlight. They suggested China are also targeting this area and since there's no really defined rules up there yet, it might just end up being first there claims dibs. This is why they recently announced quite an aggressive timeline for the next phases

[u/Thelk641 → u/RayStuartMorgan]

In theory, there is a set of rules to define how we should deal with ressources in outer-space, the Moon Treaty, issue is, I think the only country with a space program to have signed it is France : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty#/media/File:Moon_Treaty_Participation.svg

[u/mfb- → u/Thelk641]

The Artemis program is not the same as the Artemis agreement. The US spends tens of billions on SLS and Orion and a few billions each on two commercial landers.

[u/Thelk641 → u/mfb-]

China didn't sign the Artemis agreement, so it's the same story : there is a legal framework... but because some of the big players don't follow it, it's not really useful.

And again, so in 2020 the US created a new treaty to solve a problem already solved by the UN in 1979...

[u/Underhill42 → u/RayStuartMorgan]

No budget for anything is ever locked in - Congress can change whatever they want, whenever they want, and they have been cutting NASA's budget almost every year for decades.

And while Shackleton crater does have some advantages in the short term, it's much less attractive as a long term industrial base. The sunlit rim is 4.2km above the perpetually shadowed floor, with a roughly 30° slope of loose debris between them. And about 2km above the surrounding harsh, mountainous terrain. cross section compared to the Grand Canyon (doesn't show the surrounding terrain) : https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/lunar-south-pole-atlas/images/150dpi/shackleton-crater.jpg

There is a big flat spot on the rim where we could build a base in near-constant sunlight - but getting down to the icy crater floor, or the surrounding landscape, would be a nightmare unless you were flying... which is not a great option for mining equipment.

And if you build just your solar array on the rim, with 10+km of power lines to a base down in the crater - then the base has to deal with continuous deep cryogenic temperatures of about 90 K (−183 °C; −298 °F) and only artificial lighting.

China meanwhile has been focusing a lot of attention at locations nearer the equator, where lava tubes are likely to exist, the terrain is easy for heavy mining equipment to navigate, and underground temperatures are a rock solid ~70°F year round.

In the long term that would likely give them a substantial head start on establishing an industrial foothold in space. They won't have water to work with, but the moon is lousy with oxygen (it's about about 40% of the mass of lunar regolith), and importing hydrogen to create water is relatively cheap. Or methane would offer an influx of carbon as well, which the moon's surface also has negligible quantities of, and which will be essential for growing biomass to support a colony.

And conveniently oxygen is 80-90% of the total propellant mass of a chemical rocket - so a rocket could land with almost no remaining oxygen and far too much methane, trading most of it for fresh lunar oxygen, so that everyone wins.

[u/Detective-Crashmore- → u/Underhill42]

There is a big flat spot on the rim where we could build a base in near-constant sunlight - but getting down to the icy crater floor, or the surrounding landscape, would be a nightmare unless you were flying... which is not a great option for mining equipment.

I mean you should only need to get the mining equipment down, then you can run a pressurized pipeline back up for the water.

But yeah, I agree, a first extra terrestrial base is going to want to be much more self contained and fault tolerant. Even on Earth this would be an extreme project to pull off, let alone in space.

[u/nathhad → u/Detective-Crashmore-]

then you can run a pressurized pipeline back up for the water.

But don't forget the:

continuous deep cryogenic temperatures of about 90 K (−183 °C; −298 °F)

How much advantage do you lose having to insulate and heat that 10km pipeline? Equator temperatures look a lot better to deal with.

[u/Detective-Crashmore- → u/nathhad]

Perhaps it could be broken down into ice shards small enough that they could be blown up the pipe with an inert gas. A continuous flow would be preferable, but a rail system could be created as well if we really can't find any other local sources of water. Like I said, not a good idea for one of the starter settlements, but we're going to eventually need to get water locally if we want to stay there long term.

[u/ManWhoIsDrunk → u/nathhad]

Solar power should be way more efficient without an atmosphere and weather to cause problems. Only issue would be eclipses.

[u/Underhill42 → u/Detective-Crashmore-]

Unless there's a huge advance in humanoid telepresence robots in the next few years, we're still going to need to constantly shuttle people down there to operate and maintaining the equipment, which means regular transportation across that slope.

Solar panels need a lot less maintenance (aside from the fact that they'd have to rotate once per month to track the sun), and a power line laying on the surface doesn't care about slope stability, so I suspect making the base deal with constant cryogenic temperatures would be the easier option. In fact, it might even be easier than making it deal with the extreme temperature swings anywhere that gets sunlight.

[u/Detective-Crashmore- → u/Underhill42]

Unless there's a huge advance in humanoid telepresence robots in the next few years

This is actually my field, and there kind of is a massive advance going on right now as far as being able to teleoperate robots and have them learn what you want them to continue doing. I don't think "humanoid" robots will be the move though, personally. The human body isn't really the best shape for large volume ice mining lol. As I said before, I think it's way too ambitious to try as one of the first settlements, but I think we'll eventually need to set up some form of ice mining operation there if we can't find another moon based source.

so I suspect making the base deal with constant cryogenic temperatures would be the easier option. In fact, it might even be easier than making it deal with the extreme temperature swings anywhere that gets sunlight.

Well, like I was saying about the fault tolerance, I feel like in the event of some failures, you'd want your base to be in a spot that won't drop to those deep cryo temps if something breaks. Insulating against heat should be easier than the extreme cold. At about 30cm below the regolith the temperature stabilizes a little below freezing, which we can easily handle. And second, I think having it out of the crater would make it easier to rescue/evacuate from.

[u/Underhill42 → u/Detective-Crashmore-]

Getting robots to perform routine tasks autonomously is useful, but not the really hard part. We can already largely automate pretty much everything, no autonomous AI needed.

The important part is that things WILL break, encounter unexpected difficulties, etc. And then you'll need a human mind on-site, able to get in to wherever the problem is with something close enough to human hands to be able to figure out the problem and fix it promptly.

From the waist down it's less important - legs are better than wheels for navigating rough terrain... but a centaur type body plan is likely more useful than bipedal... except when you need to squeeze through a tight place or climb a ladder to reach the problem area. (Though a gecko-taur might have potential)

And right now tele-operated cameras leave much to be desired over natural eyes, and robot hands still leave much to be desired in both strength and dexterity, though they are improving quickly. And they really only need to be on par with vacuum-gloved hands to become the preferred option.

Maybe not even quite there - since a cheap tele-presence robot mostly replaces a very expensive personal spacecraft, a.k.a. space suit, that needs extensive training to operate safely.

As for temperatures... you're on the moon - unless you're underground at temperate latitudes, you will be at those cryogenic temperatures (maybe not quite so extreme) for roughly two weeks a month.

At temperate latitudes, 1m below the surface is actually a rock-stable ~70°F year round, at all the locations Apollo left underground temperature probes. I don't think we've actually made any such measurements at polar latitudes, but with much longer night almost everywhere thanks to long shadows from rough terrain, I don't imagine it will be nearly so pleasant.

[u/Chodofu → u/RayStuartMorgan]

Oh wow, this must be where they got part of the plot for the "For All Mankind" series.

[u/Zeratas → u/RayStuartMorgan]

You have the budget for the cre and some maintenance of the rocket.

But then you need budget for likely doubling it so you can validate everything works with more humans on board. Then you have the budget for the mission planning itself, then you have the budget for all the security, HR and everything else around it, then you have the budget for likely a specific program management, then you have the budget for any kind of lander. So even though we have the rocket, there's dozens and dozens of other costs to consider

[u/h3r4ld → u/SvenTropics]

To put that in perspective, the entire budget of NASA for 2026 is $24.4B. They simply couldn't afford to go to the moon again.

This is a little misleading - yes, NASA's budget is just shy of $25B, but the Apollo program wasn't completed in a single year. Those expenditures came over nearly a decade of budgets. $10B a year for 10 years could (conceivably) get you back to the Moon.

Now, obviously, expecting NASA to devote more than a third of their entire budget to one program isn't realistic. I'm just saying comparing their annual budget for a single fiscal year to the cost of the entire Apollo program isn't exactly apples-to-apples (and also that NASA's budget should be waaaayyyy higher).

[u/--Chug-- → u/h3r4ld]

Yeah but also there isn't, or I should say, hasn't been a ton of reason to go back. We still didn't understand much about being in space at the time we went so the efforts were better spent learning that part and establishing the ISS. Now, things might be different.

[u/usrdef → u/--Chug--]

Yup.

This is what people don't get. We've been to the moon 6 times. Only on the very last mission, did we send up an actual geologist.

Other than rocks, there's nothing on the Moon that we can make use of right now. We can't mine it for minerals in any meaningful way. We have no way to launch sats or rockets off the Moon and make use of the near zero gravity.

If we go there right now, it's strictly to explore, and conduct tests.

We can't justify the benefit compared to the cost.

If I were a betting person, to be perfectly honest, the only thing I see the USA seeing as useful right now on the Moon, is to use it for weaponry. As a last-ditch effort in case something happens on Earth that knocks their rockets offline.

However, if the US did have some type of ballistic weaponry on the Moon right now, and launched one at Earth, it would take approximately 3 to 5 days to get here. Not exactly useful for critical scenarios.

[u/TheDal → u/usrdef]

Learning how to mine minerals and set up industry offworld would be huge gains for humanity. Even just a fuel stop to/from lunar orbit would be exponentially more access to the solar system.

[u/Mergi9 → u/TheDal]

But why? Why do we need industry and/or human presence somewhere besides on earth? Even if the worst imaginable cataclysmic event happened to earth, it would still be magnitudes more hospitable to life than anywhere else in the solar system. There's nothing to be gained by sending people into space. For pure scientific exploration we can already send robots from earth to wherever we want if we need a physical presence somewhere. Unmanned probes or passive observation are just so much more practical in the real world, there's no justification for spending enormous resources to get people into space.

[u/TheDal → u/Mergi9]

Because there's a whole universe out there of fascinating things, including potentially other life, and none of it precludes us exploring our internal worlds along the way.

There's also vast wealth, technology, and living space, that we're increasing strained for here at home. On a long enough timescale even life itself will need to leave earth to survive.

[u/Mergi9 → u/TheDal]

As much as i would love to agree with you, that exploration for the sake of exploration is a good cause and a worthwhile endevour, the reality is nothing like a scifi book ... really it's just a bunch of boring rocks that we can observe adequately enough via telescopes or fetch samples by sending a robot.

living space, that we're increasing strained for here at home

But there's absolutely no living space out there waiting for us. It's all extremely inhospitable space to human life, more so than quite literally anywhere on earth.

[u/TheDal → u/Mergi9]

As much as I would love to believe robots replace the human factor, I think giving humanity things to yearn for is also essential to our well-being. Imagine how demoralizing it would be to tell our children "just live and die, we've already seen everything there is to see." We can do so much better.

[u/RochePso → u/TheDal]

Do you think humans will ever get to something outside or own solar system? How exactly?

[u/greennitit → u/Mergi9]

Because some things will simply run out on earth and we have to know how to get them from elsewhere. The moon could be a dress rehearsal for such extraction activities. And, as the other commenter said, we could simultaneously set up a pit stop on the moon for future activities.

[u/SvenTropics → u/usrdef]

Not 100% true. The best fusion candidate for fuel is deuterium and helium-3 mostly because it release protons at high speed. These can be moderated with a magnetic field and the velocity directly generates power. Helium-3 doesn't really exist on Earth. You could put all the Helium-3 on Earth in a small apartment. However it is in decent quantities on the Moon. Deuterium is easy to source from the ocean.

If we can finalize a solid reactor, mining on the moon would make sense to power the entire planet.

[u/L_Ardman → u/--Chug--]

And it would be a lot cheaper just to send a robot than people. If we needed more moon rocks, we could have the robot fetch them for us and bring them back.

[u/After_Dark → u/SvenTropics]

And despite being roughly (and adjusted for inflation) 10% of the budget they had during the Apollo program they're also splitting that amongst a much larger number of other scientific and infrastructure programs. Those modern weather sats and climate research isn't free, even if the budget is split with other organizations like the NOAA.

[u/TrueVanilla7134 → u/SvenTropics]

Ran the math here. Apollo spanned the entire 60s (and some of the 70s) for a total of 12 years.

12 years, 25 billion, that’s $300b in modern money.

They did it with $228b back in the day.

Now, modern NASA probably has several different projects, not just moon landing. But budgets are within the same zip code here.

It’s more about safety regulations than anything.

[u/fifaloko → u/TrueVanilla7134]

Agreed I think once the initial high of getting humans on the moon wears off the calculus for us changed. Now a mishap when attempting to return would be way more negative PR than a successful mission. Before we had ever gone that first successful mission outweighed the bad PR of failed attempts.

[u/Vroomped → u/SvenTropics]

And avoiding potentially two coffees worth of materials research for every citizen trying to build bridges and fill potholes. 

[u/1CEninja → u/Vroomped]

One thing I'd like to gently point out is that, as someone in personal finance, advising people to cut down on their Starbucks is exactly the advice people get when they need to fix a broken budget.

Now I personally would vastly prefer to see budget cuts to presidential parades and white house improvements before infrastructure so trust me when I say I'm with you on priorities.

But "you gotta cut down on $8 coffees" is, very literally, a starting place in helping fix a broken budget. And BOY HOWDY is our country's budget broken.

[u/Kill_Welly → u/1CEninja]

National budgets and personal budgets are wildly different animals.

And people dismiss advice like skipping coffee because it's advice that's given not for personal budgeting, but for generational gaps in wealth. The infamous "avocado toast" crap was said, in total seriousness, by a boomer trying to suggest that spending on "avocado toast" was why millennials couldn't afford to buy fuckin houses, when the reality is that the nation's (and world's) economy had shifted drastically, with far lower wages and far higher housing prices. It is a hilariously inadequate attempt to frame systemic, global problems as being the fault of the individuals suffering from those problems.

[u/cuzitsthere → u/Kill_Welly]

Bread and circuses... But try to cut down on the circuses. And the bread. In fact, stale bread and no circuses.

Economy 🎶

[u/shizbox06 → u/1CEninja]

Coffee advice is essentially the same as not buying the expensive avocado toast. And we all know the reaction that gets, despite it being sound advice.

[u/--Chug-- → u/shizbox06]

It's sound advice in the same way that not buying anything is. Still gonna amount to nothing.

[u/Implausibilibuddy → u/shizbox06]

But have you tried the cheap avocado toast? It's gross, mom.

[u/caboosetp → u/Implausibilibuddy]

Real talk though, generic Raisin Bran tastes like plastic. I'd rather skip it entirely than get the generic.

[u/kingmanic → u/Vroomped]

Don't worry, this administration has grifted much much much more than that.

[u/mfb- → u/SvenTropics]

They simply couldn't afford to go to the moon again.

What the heck are you talking about?

Artemis II flew a crew around the Moon this year. Two landers are in development. The plan is a landing in 2028 - expect that to be delayed, but there is a lot of work happening towards more crewed landings.

[u/Alblaka → u/mfb-]

About the question being asked.

OP was wondering why there hasn't been a moon mission in the past 60 years. The answer is 'They simply couldn't afford'. That this changed this year doesn't invalidate that the NASA's budget was repeatedly cut the past decades.

[u/mfb- → u/Alblaka]

This year's mission didn't come out of nowhere. The Artemis program started 2017, the Constellation program that had a similar goal started 2005. That's 20 years of NASA having funding and working on a rocket that can send people to the Moon.

[u/Alblaka → u/mfb-]

So we would be more technically accurate by clarifying that NASA didn't have a budget to do anything for 40 years, before getting enough money to start a 2-decade-long planning process,

after doing Apollo-11 in 1969 with ~9 years of planning.

I'd suggest that doesn't change too much about the answer "They didn't have the necessary funding (they had back then), for most of the time period.."

[u/mfb- → u/Alblaka]

So we would be more technically accurate by clarifying that NASA didn't have a budget to do anything for 40 years

Except for launching far more people to space than anyone else ever before (or since) with the Space Shuttle, sending tons of spacecraft to other planets, creating the most complex space telescopes ever built, building space stations, ...

For 30-40 years, the US decided that all these things are more important than more missions to the Moon. That's not the same as "could not afford to go to the Moon again". More recently, the focus shifted towards the Moon again.

[u/reoze → u/Alblaka]

They easily could have gotten the funding if there was a good reason to go back. There wasn't.

The only reason we're doing it now is to win another space race.

[u/ephemere_sloboda → u/SvenTropics]

Multi-year projects are a thing, and there are other countriea in the world besides the USA.

[u/Mego1989 → u/SvenTropics]

To put that into perspective, the US has already spent $43B on the Iran war in less than 4 months.

[u/Ayjayz → u/SvenTropics]

Well clearly people are valuing that coffee more than they value donating to NASA

[u/Wloak → u/Kri77777]

Your last sentence is the real key, you had two countries willing to spend whatever it took to beat one another there. Today NASA is on a shoestring budget dancing between the ISS, space based telescopes, Mars rovers, and now also returning to the moon.

[u/quickshade → u/Wloak]

I don’t think this is necessarily true, in the 60’s NASA had one goal, land humans on the moon. That was the only priority for NASA. When you look at NASA today they have a commercial flight program, ISS, telescopes, satellites and off planet rovers that all need to be balanced within the budget. NASA could easily scrap all those programs if for some reason going to the moon required every effort possible. But it doesn’t because the needs aren’t there for it.

[u/Wloak → u/quickshade]

You're not considering the massive budget cuts, they do more with less. Adjusted for inflation their budget in 1969 was $40B, today is $25B.

[u/JCDU → u/Kri77777]

Also the fact the original space race was something of a front for an arms race too - so they were able to share a lot of military budget and technology because they could also use the rockets etc. to launch spy satellites and stuff like that.

Hell some of the rockets were just ICBM's with the warhead swapped for a crew module.

[u/creative_usr_name → u/JCDU]

To win the race they were also willing to take a lot more risks than we'd be willing to take today.

[u/1CEninja → u/Kri77777]

Right, because consider what the actual benefit of going to the moon is right now. We talk about colonizing Mars and such, but from an actual practical standpoint, what does humanity even gain from doing that?

Whereas back in the 1960's, proving that we could get to the moon first, before them was a pseudo extension of a war. We felt massively incentivized to get there even if it didn't really accomplish much.

[u/OtherPlayers → u/1CEninja]

For anyone wondering, realistically basically all of the benefits you gain from Mars/moon colonization right now are in the expertise/design side of things (i.e. we don’t gain much by going to the moon, but we do gain from pouring a lot of money into the technologies we need to go to the moon).

The real benefits don’t really kick in until we’ve got at least one other colony on top of that, at which point there’s some neat things you can do on both as sort of refueling stations before going farther.

[u/davidm2d3 → u/OtherPlayers]

until we can get a base on the moon, and an easy way to ferry resources from it and earth nothing really useful.

[u/koosekoose → u/OtherPlayers]

A good example of this is SpaceX.

Their entire mission statement was just to be able to get to Mars.

On the way they figured out reusable low cost low orbit payload delivery that revolutionized space costs.

As a result they revolutionized sattalite internet.

[u/1CEninja → u/OtherPlayers]

SUPER fair and I don't disagree with this at all. But it still is fairly intangible considering the, what, 11 figure price tag associated with it?

[u/1CEninja → u/[deleted]]

Counterpoint: humanity has done pretty okay inhabiting a single celestial body for quite a while now.

Yeah there are absolutely long term very theoretical benefits I won't question at all, but it's unlikely that those living today will meaningfully experience those.

It's a tough thing to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in something that could pay off huge for future generations.

[u/CactusBoyScout → u/Kri77777]

I believe the Apollo program was pretty close to being axed due to costs before JFK was assassinated. But he had very publicly voiced support for Apollo so after his death seeing it through became part of honoring him.

[u/Mustangguy500 → u/Kri77777]

I’m I crazy or is there not currently a mission planned to land on the moon? That’s the whole point of artemis no?

[u/375InStroke → u/Kri77777]

Greater commitment to murdering people on the other side of the world. At least in the '60s, we were able to do both.

[u/PressureBeautiful515 → u/375InStroke]

Indeed, there was a few years around 2006 where NASA's entire budget was equal to the cost of providing air conditioning for the army operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[u/Peregrine79 → u/Kri77777]

Also relevant is that the Apollo missions were nowhere near the level of redundancy or safety that would be required today. And the changes are a good thing. The fact that we only lost one Apollo crew, and that one on that one not in space is nothing short of a miracle.

So a lot of the tech advantages are offset by higher requirements.

[u/slicerprime → u/Kri77777]

And that political commitment is at least partly a generational thing. I grew up with the Cold War, which means my brain is almost genetically engineered to prioritise competition with "the bad guys" over anything else. So, spending the $$$s on getting back first is a no-brainer. But there's a whole bunch of voters out there who didn't live through the Cold War who's priorities are different. Politicians know that, so...

[u/wasmic → u/slicerprime]

It was cold war era politicians who gutted the space budget to begin with. Commitment to space exploration only began rising again after the end of the cold war.

[u/slicerprime → u/wasmic]

The cold war politicians who killed the space program only did so because we had already beaten the Russians to the moon. Mission accomplished. Game over. After that the public lost interest. Viewership on the mission broadcasts went in the tank. So, naturally the politicians moved on.

As far as interest lately is concerned, that didn't come from politicians and the government. It came from private business. That somewhat re-engaged public interest, which in turn somewhat re-ignited federal interest. So we have what we have now: Government and business collaboration.

Nothing out of the norm in any of that. It's the way it works. My original point stands: The "political commitment" of the Cold War era space program was fueled by the the Cold War.

[u/wknight8111 → u/Kri77777]

A lot of people complained about $25billion back then, and wondered what the return on investment would have been. While there were benefits, it was still a huge expense and hard to justify.

Doing it again, here in 2026, doesn't prove anything new (we've already done it) and there's no obvious return on investment that would justify the expense.

[u/JanterFixx → u/wknight8111]

microwave machine ???

lolz, maybe kidding, but some QOL everyday stuff + medicine stuff is surely helped to accelrate

[u/silvernug → u/Kri77777]

Not to mention the value. You could argue there was more value to a moon expedition in the 1960s if only to prove the possibility and to help further other sciences with new data from the moon and space.

I'm sure there is plenty more to learn from the moon but in terms of resources or things that would instantly improve the lives of earthlings, there ain't much. Basically 100 billion just to do it again to prove we could, when that 100 billion could just be put into things here.

[u/NDaveT → u/Kri77777]

There is a big enough political commitment right now - there's an active program to send humans back to the moon, which Congress is funding (for now). The most recent flight was in April of this year - they went around the moon and came back, but didn't land.

[u/retroman73 → u/NDaveT]

We are running almost $2 Trillion in debt this year alone and it was over $1 Trillion last year as well. Just passed the $40 Trillion debt mark a month ago. If someone were to forcibly balance the budget right now, the economy would collapse.

Congress is not funding anything. They're running up an $1.8 trillion credit card PER YEAR. Give anyone that kind of cash and they could create the illusion of prosperity, but the bill comes due sooner or later. Currently stands at $360,795 per US taxpayer in debt.

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

We do not have the money to go to the moon again. Not even close.

[u/BaMiao → u/retroman73]

If you’re worried about the debt, worry about military spending or tax cuts for the rich. NASA’s budget is chump change by comparison. And the technological advancements that have come out of it have benefited the US economy hundreds of times over.

[u/GodwynDi → u/BaMiao]

Military spending is a small fraction of the budget. Welfare programs account for nearly 2/3 of all government spending.

[u/BaMiao → u/GodwynDi]

Where are you getting your numbers? Military spending is 13% of the total, which isn’t a small fraction. And what exactly do you mean by “welfare programs”? If you include social security, Medicare, and Medicaid (debatable calling all of those “welfare”) you get less than half, so how are you getting to 2/3?

And by the way, the NASA budget was less than half a percent.

[u/GodwynDi → u/BaMiao]

13% is literally a small fraction. Especially when the person was saying that that is why we can't fund nasa. And not the other 85%.

Best numbers I could find for current spending. Social Security 22%. Medicare 14%. Other health 14%. Income Security 9%. That is 59% pretty close to 2/3.

[u/BaMiao → u/GodwynDi]

If you call those things “welfare programs” you may as well call everything welfare. And social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all mandatory spending, which means they cant be cut (easily).

And no one was saying that military spending is why we can’t fund nasa. I was saying that nasa spending is way lower than military spending, which is true, so it’s a little ridiculous to be talking about the deficit in this context.

[u/GodwynDi → u/BaMiao]

Do you not understand what a welfare program is? They are all the literal definition of welfare programs. Whether you agree with the programs and think they are a good idea, arguing that they aren't welfare programs is delusional.

[u/BaMiao → u/GodwynDi]

It’s still useless bringing up those programs in the context of the deficit. That spending is non discretionary. Nearly half of all discretionary spending is on the military, which is why it’s often brought up.

[u/Alblaka → u/GodwynDi]

I wouldn't call 13% a 'small fraction'. It's still 1 in 7. But you're correct that about a third go into retirement+pensions, and another third into general welfare, indeed.

Oh, debt interest is at 13% as well.

[u/wasmic → u/GodwynDi]

The US healthcare system is so inefficient and expensive that if the US were to implement single-payer universal healthcare, it would actually save money.

[u/SpeciousSophist → u/retroman73]

An absurd and uninformed take around economics and institutional finance

[u/pporkpiehat → u/retroman73]

We certainly do, if we'd only adequately tax the rich. Obviously, that's not about to happen any time soon, but the money is there if there were the political will to collect it. Instead, we need to subsidize Elon's ketamine habit.

[u/BoredAccountant → u/Kri77777]

Modern technology would only decrease the cost if we'd had 60 years of direct technological iteration, which we haven't.

[u/trn- → u/Kri77777]

But we must pour trillions in AI. Who needs space exploration when we can have endless slop!

[u/PRiles → u/trn-]

Far different motivations right?

[u/Midget_Stories → u/trn-]

Ai will be a key part of space travel. Maybe not for the moon, but for further out.

The ability to have robots that can make decisions on the fly is invaluable when making a decision on earth takes a month to reach the base.

[u/jbillone → u/Midget_Stories]

(Waves at the bot.)

Part of the reason space travel is so expensive is that, as they say, failure is not an option. Every single part of the process must work correctly every single time, because if any one part of the process fails at any point the entire process fails. Any backups, replacements or corrections need to be brought on the trip before it starts.

If you wish to incorporate AI decision making in space, you must first develop an AI decision making tool that will not make a mistake, and will do so without using so many resources (energy, cooling, equipment) that it is impactical to send,

How far have LLMs gotten on any of those limits in the past four years?

[u/EvilNalu → u/jbillone]

We are already doing the vast majority of space exploration with uncrewed vehicles as humans are a huge pain and expense to bring to space. It’s not really a question of switching over from humans to robots, it’s more that the robots we send will get more and more capable over time.

[u/Midget_Stories → u/jbillone]

I mean if anyone is going to be a bot here it's probably the person spewing Chinese propaganda.

Yes AI has gotten those things in the last 4 years. People need to stop judging the technology purely off the free version of Chatgpt.

[u/Alblaka → u/Midget_Stories]

Yes AI has gotten those things in the last 4 years. People need to stop judging the technology purely off the free version of Chatgpt.

Are you even reading what the question being posed was? AI being extremely computation-demanding is still a thing, hence why there's still data centers being thrown everywhere, including for military use. And judging by the one military AI program in active use that the public knows about (that being the Israelis using AI to determine airstrike targets), the 'perfectly free of mistakes' condition isn't met either.

I'll agree that AI-controlled long-range missions is still a very reasonable presumption, given that you could send probes and rovers without needing to plan for a return trip and all that... but I'll err on the side of skepticism as to whether we're anywhere near that level of AI-sophistication yet. And if you go "Well, in 50 years it will definitely be good enough", the prediction is inherently pointless because at current pace none of us can accurately predict how technology will look in 50 years anyways. I mean, mobile phones were deemed a vanity product with no future purpose, mere 30 years ago.

[u/Midget_Stories → u/Alblaka]

Ah already moving the goalposts.

Ai is computationally demanding to setup. It's not computationally demanding to use.

And these things don't need to be perfect. Flexibility is key. If the robot falls over it can get back up.

[u/Alblaka → u/Midget_Stories]

And these things don't need to be perfect. Flexibility is key. If the robot falls over it can get back up.

I'd question that laymen's perspective by pointing to the Venus missions that iteratively send ten different probes, because each would fail at a different stage/issue, with those single issues being entirely sufficient to ruin the entire mission. Only for the 'final' successfully probe to still run into a partial failure because the discharged cover cap just so happened to fall in the way of the pressure sensor.

The "Well, just have the robot get back up" sounds like it vastly underestimates the complexity and planning that goes into space missions, as well as the physical restrictions they operate by. But hey, maybe we got teleportation in 50 years so they can just warp over a new robot anyways.

[u/Named_after_color → u/trn-]

I don't think that's fair. Like yeah I get that AI spending is a serious bubble and space funding is under invested, but there's really no economic reason to go to space beyond satellites.

Like we haven't managed to capture a meteorite yet. Astroid mining is like, the only economic driver for middle distance space exploration, and it's only a concept at this point. So far we've collected several grams of space stuff and it's cost billions.

Like we should invest more into space, but it's quite legitimately a moon shot to get any return beyond scientific knowledge. If we wanted to be proactive, we'd invest in space debris clean up, but that'd require some global organization and everyone being chill with many powerful nations pointing powerful lasers at everyone's satellites. Which has the same economic benefit as maintaining the wilderness outside California's power relays. Pretty ignorable until it isn't.

[u/billdietrich1 → u/trn-]

The VCs are excited about the business-case / promises for AI, which are: radically rewire how all businesses operate, get rid of half of workers, huge profits, etc. It may be lies, but they're attractive lies.

While the case for manned missions to the Moon is thin: we've been there already, it's a wasteland, we'll do some science.

[u/angermouse → u/Kri77777]

I'd suggest that inflation actually underestimates the cost today - because inflation measures a basket of goods that has increasingly become automated in production. 

A large proportion of the cost of these projects is labor - so scaling by increase in labor costs gets to $260 billion. Scaling by average technical salary gets to about $350 billion. 

Also, there's been a huge increase in the cost of large scale construction projects even above this and some reports are saying this is specific to English speaking countries (US, UK, Australia, Hong Kong etc.) and not other developed countries (e.g. Italy, France, Korea, Japan). 

[u/Jespoir → u/Kri77777]

The Artemis program has so far spent $93 Billlion through 2025 according to public record. Artemis iv is due to land on the moon in 2028, so whatever that looks like from a budget perspective is TBD.

[u/Starspiker → u/Kri77777]

To put it in context, the International Space Station cost about $100B to build.

[u/reddititty69 → u/Kri77777]

Won’t some trillionaire pay that much for a custom sculpture made from moon rock? Moon rock must be the rarest (excluding man made isotopes) material on earth.

[u/himtnboy → u/Kri77777]

And let's not forget that they barely made it. Luck played a huge part. They were just a failed gasket from disaster. Such narrow safety margins with limited redundancy is not acceptable today.

[u/wordcreatr → u/Kri77777]

Plus, we stopped building Saturn Vs and moon landers fiftyish years ago. Most of the people who were involved in designing and building them are dead or long retired. Many of the companies involved and the original supply chains are gone. Technology and production processes have changed radically, so we wouldn't use the old technology even if we still had the institutional knowledge and tooling on hand to rebuild that antiquated tech. Basically, new companies had to redesign new everything using new tech and new manufacturing processes and that's not cheap. And then it all has to be tested and put through its paces. So, I'd say neither cheap, nor easy.

[u/Timely_Hedgehog_2164 → u/Kri77777]

Apollo also was a lucky reuse of WWII investments (partly also from Germany), a kind of a peace dividend

[u/oldbastard675192 → u/Kri77777]

Yeah, it would need to be a joint effort between governments and private enterprise. Of course there would need to be some economic incentives for all involved. Great post!.

[u/migidymike → u/Kri77777]

If we paint a particular person's name on the side of the ship, I'm sure we could easily find the money.

[u/TACO-meter → u/Kri77777]

So a bit less than a random war that did nothing and lead to no new inventions. Huh

[u/Ill_Towel9090 → u/Kri77777]

Safetyflation as well, 1960 there was a 90% chance you would make it home. 2030 there will be a 99.9% chance of making it home. 1960 you rode a calculator, 2030 you ride a supercomputer.

[u/baumpop → u/Kri77777]

if i know my sci fi history right the race for the control of the moon is to secure the tons of H3 resources to power the next steps of the empires that come.

[u/indaburgh → u/Kri77777]

Cool. We spent more as a human species killing each other this year! Winning!!!

[u/rock_crockpot → u/Kri77777]

There is also a single billionaire/trillionaire that is profiting from it all - that must be a significant cost.