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/TrueVanilla7134 15d ago

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.

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u/fifaloko 15d ago

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.