Why is it so hard to go back to the moon?

The apollo program ran from 1961-1972, 11 years.[1]

The total budget was ~260B in todays dollars.[1]

That's ~24B per year in todays dollars. NASA's current budget is 22B[2], less than .5% of the federal budget. We sent 4 times that amount to Ukraine for the war by an emergency vote. Computing power has increased effectively infinitely, manufacturing automation & precision has increased incredibly. We are vastly richer than we were in 1972: our GDP has increased roughly 25X since then.

The reason we have not gone back to the moon is because we have chosen not to do so. It is not hard, nor particularly expensive.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

From the article in no particular order:

- We don't spend enough money

- We have a low tolerance for risk

- We choose high-tech, finessed designs over simpler, heavier designs

- The project is designed and built by international committee

It sounds like a recipe for failure to me. I'm skeptical that the USA will ever again land humans on the moon because the USA seems unable to spend enough to succeed by brute force and the supposedly cheaper finely engineered designs don't seem up to the rigours. For example, putting computer everywhere is common engineering practice these days, but modern computer chips (even the space hardened varieties) cannot be as robust as TTL logic from the 60s. Yet it sounds like a career ending event to suggest that the critical computation be done (and limited to what can be done!) purely in TTL logic.

We've gone back to the moon many times, just not carrying useless people.

On another note it annoys me a bit that people in power are "fine" with thousands of dead people for wars that aren't needed, but god forbid one or two people dying pursuing true exploration as volunteers.

Isn’t it simple economics? There’s no incentives

Perhaps entertainment might fund it? Like a reality show on the moon? Still doubt it will finance billions

The US will land astronauts on the moon, probably this decade but maybe early in the 2030s. That's my bet. Compared to previous human spaceflight efforts, Artemis has the support of both major parties and the NASA community (scientists, engineers, and administrators). That was not always the case, which is why the Constellation Program failed.

Moreover, the Artemis program, unlike the "flags and footprints" goal of Apollo, has a plausible path for a sustainable human presence on the moon and an evolutionary path to a human Mars landing. If they can pull that off, with a budget smaller than Apollo, then I think NASA will deserve all the praise they get.

Will China land humans on the moon before us? No, because we already did that in 1969. But they might land humans before Artemis does. In that case, I suspect we'll see a real-live version of "For All Mankind" and we'll dump extra funding on NASA. Maybe. Or maybe we'll do what the Soviets did when we beat them and shift to something else, like Mars.

The secret of the Apollo program was that they weren't all that safety concious; even after Apollo 1. Beating the soviets was more important.

They were very lucky they only had 2 mission failures and 3 lives lost.

Because the goal as of now is not to get to the moon. It's a government jobs program. Nothing wrong with that IMO, but in the 1960s the goal was to get to the moon before the Soviets + pour money into ICBM-adjacent tech.

Now the motives are dubious. Gateway to Mars? Cold War 2 with China? I don't think anyone even knows what the goal is other than "spend money".

it's not that hard

it's just that the usa can only do very easy things now, because the people there have forgotten how to work together

the article explains some of the forms this takes, but, for political reasons, frames it differently

see also: bullet trains, homelessness, mass incarceration, hvdc transmission, chip fabrication, the renewable energy transition, electric vehicle manufacturing. the usa is failing to get its act together in almost every conceivable way

Thanks for the article. For a comprehensive review of Artemis, in much detail, and other NASA missions, see this paper (free online and PDF versions available at the link):

NASA at a Crossroads: Maintaining Workforce, Infrastructure, and Technology Preeminence in the Coming Decades (2024)

http://nap.nationalacademies.org/27519

It's the report of a National Academies committee of experts - organized by their Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, Space Studies Board, and Division on Engineering and Physical Science - formed to "review the critical facilities, workforce, and technology needed to achieve NASA's long-term strategic goals and mission objectives".

There is a lot of interesting material, both immediately topical and, being HN, of intellectual interest. See especially Appendix G, "NASA 20-Year Critical Missions", a list and overview of all the missions, and especially Appendix J "Technology Survey Papers", which goes into detail about critical technologies NASA needs to invent (many for Artemis) and their R&D.

Apollo is not entirely a good model of how it should be done now. We don't do computer services the same way SAGE or SABRE were done in the sixties either. We should try to use off the shelf solutions where appropriate. But at the same time recognize where we need bespoke solutions.

Apollo had to do so much new things because there was no commercial space sector yet. You have now. Apollo developed engines and rockets and entirely new ways of operation. It would be a mistake to expect to develop an entirely new launcher rocket engine for example just for landing people on the moon.

For example, one could use multiple SpaceX Falcon 9 launches to launch and fuel a low earth orbit vehicle that would fly to the moon and send a lander. Most of the mass in LEO would be liquid oxygen.

There were alternative plans to use LEO assembly already in Apollo but it was deemed too risky. They did end up using docking after the translunar injection (turning the CSM around) and then of course famously in lunar orbit.

So you wouldn't need any new launchers to go back to the moon if one started a project today with a short deadline.

Is it just the nature of singleton entities such as government agencies?

When NASA was first spun up in the late 1950s, there were no career NASA people. The people were hired from private industry. Nobody had heard of it, and it had no track record, so people probably did not join it for the prestige.

These days I feel like there is a lot of prestige associated with working for NASA. Everyday people think you are a genius for working there.

There are likely a lot of clout chasing bureaucrat types gumming up the works these days. And there is no competitor currently with the potential for a government money hose.

US government should probably have at least two competing space agencies, preferably more.

Also the field of software engineering has brain drained physical sciences and engineering for the last several decades. If you glance at salaries before choosing a major you are probably not going to do many of the disciplines related to rocketry.

My friend and I we are fixing old bikes for fun. And often the only way to figure out how to do certain things is watching YouTube videos about fixing bikes. And bikes are rather simple devices.

I guess NASA had lost all YouTube videos about how to assemble Moon rocket.

Because the NASA budget it horrible allocated and not geared towards actually achieving specific things. NASA budget is big enough, its just that it resources are horrible allocated.

I could write a lot about this topic here, I have done before, but anybody that looks at anything other then that fact first, misses the problem. Other things that people mention might play a role, but by far the biggest is politics of NASA and NASA internal politics.

A lack of competing forces

The US collectively felt that they needed to prove that capitalism was superior to communism. In this case, the contracting system was the competition between private sector entities to produce the parts and expertise, alongside NASA the state run enterprise handling requirements and coordination.

While the Soviet Union relied on more state run enterprises, aiming to prove collective coordination.

With the absence of resources up there, and lack of return, and inability to prove anything about capitalism vs communism to anyone that mattered, the programs atrophied in both unions.

How does an article about costs in the space industry discuss Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne, and Lockheed Martin, but never mention SpaceX?

For our next project we decided to bring venus home.

Decline of state capacity after the 1978 abolishment of the Civil Service Commission. There were poor gatekeeping controls in place afterwards and employee quality gradually declined. Now anybody with any sort of intelligence, drive or ambition works in the private sector. Salary is one aspect, but so is the desire to avoid working with people who are dumb and never get fired.

The political justification to spend so much money and more importantly to take as many risks as in the '60s just isn't there anymore.

At the same time NASA probably has many other interesting missions to run today, and to operate from the past, with lower total budget than 5 decades ago.

There are two simple reasons.

1. You never went in the first place.

2. The moon is occupied by Nazis, aliens or both who have warned you never to return.

Tell Americans that the Communist Chinese are planning to build a gender transition ray on the moon and just watch the money flow.