Why We Never Visit the Moon Again
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To this twenty-four hour period, people wonder: If we went to the moon in the 1960s, why is information technology taking so long to get back?
Earlier this yr, at a meeting of the National Space Council, Vice President Mike Pence said it was "not good enough" that NASA told him it would take till 2028 to return to the moon.
"Nosotros don't take the political will that provides the money to exercise it," is the short answer, said Casey Dreier, senior infinite-policy adviser, chief advocate, and biggest space fan at the Planetary Society, a nonprofit that promotes space science and exploration.
"It's too really important to remember why Apollo happened in the kickoff place wasn't because of some idealistic, soaring vision of exploration," Dreier added.
President John F. Kennedy did non spend $5.4 billion in 1960s money — what amounts to more than $45 billion today — considering he cared most space.
"The only reason he committed the resources to Apollo that he did was that he saw Apollo every bit a front in the Cold War," Dreier said.
The large spending boost NASA got went away not long after Neil Armstrong and the other astronauts returned to Earth. President Richard Nixon welcomed Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew back in 1969 , and there were six more Apollo missions. But by the very next year, in 1970, Nixon cut NASA'southward budget by hundreds of millions of dollars and said it was no longer a special plan. Like any other part of regime, human infinite flight would have to compete for resources.
That'southward why Poppy Northcutt, who worked at Mission Control during the Apollo program, chosen it a pleasant memory, but also sad and bittersweet. NASA already had plans for more than aggressive missions to the moon and Mars, she said, and she wishes they could take done those besides.
"In Congress' mind, and perhaps in the public heed besides, they viewed it equally a race, a race with the Russians, and once the race with the Russians was won … there was not anything more to do," Northcutt said.
NASA's budget remained low for decades. The agency'due south crewed infinite missions stayed in low earth orbit ever since, about one-thousandth of the style to the moon — like going a few blocks rather than traveling across the land.
So in 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke autonomously higher up the earth's atmosphere, killing the seven crew members. Dreier said the disaster made the White House and Congress reverberate: Why do we send humans into space? Why are they risking their lives?
After that massive setback, President George W. Bush-league came up with a bold new mission for NASA, perhaps with the thought that if lives are going to be put at hazard with space exploration, we might besides shoot for the moon. The goal: render to the moon by 2020, live and work on the lunar surface, then get to Mars and other planets. NASA called the plan Constellation.
Then-NASA Ambassador Michael Griffin called it " Apollo on steroids. "
NASA got to work on a bigger rocket, a lunar lander three times larger than the one for the Apollo missions. The Eagle was on the moon for a few hours. This one would stay a total week.
In 2008, Eugene Cernan, the final astronaut to walk on the moon , visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA was already in the last stage of the design procedure for the lunar lander. Kathy Laurini, project director, remembers Cernan telling her squad to add something that would make being in space a piffling more pleasant for the astronauts:
"When you lot're on these missions, yous're far abroad from earth, and you lot're roughing it up, y'all don't have a not bad identify to sleep, it's difficult to become to the bath … what would really take been nice is to exist able to wake up in the morning and have a nice hot loving cup of coffee," Laurini said.
And so it came as a full shock when the Obama administration canceled Constellation in 2010. Charles Bolden, the NASA administrator at the fourth dimension , described information technology as "a death in the family."
Some space analysts, to this day, say Obama "ruined space exploration" and "expressed an antipathy to American exceptionalism." But Dreier noted that Obama inherited the program from George Due west. Bush-league, who promised an Apollo-sized program but could not pair it with Apollo-sized funding.
"The political support for that initiative never really materialized. And by the time the Obama administration came in, they were looking at a program that was billions of dollars over budget, years behind schedule, and it was unclear what level of success they could expect out of that and win."
After Constellation, Dreier said NASA got smart and decided to build something that would piece of work, more or less, no affair where the next president wanted to go: a big rocket and a coiffure capsule that could stay in space.
"You lot can send information technology to the moon, you can probably send it to an asteroid, perhaps through some modifications, you tin send things to Mars, but yous don't need to showtime over every iv years," he said.
In that location's likewise something NASA doesn't similar to talk nigh considering information technology removes the romance of space travel: the space plan is a giant job-creation program.
NASA shouldn't be shy near information technology, Dreier said — it'southward part of the big picture, and it's how space exploration gets paid for.
"NASA is one of the purest expressions of human curiosity that we meet in the entire world," Dreier said. "What other government agency has fans similar this? Yous don't see the Department of Agriculture having people call themselves agriculture fanatics."
People buy NASA T-shirts, pins and hats considering space exploration is cool. That's why we make motion-picture show afterward motion picture about the astronauts, the gripping human drama, life and death stakes, but we don't scout movies well-nigh the politics of paying for it.
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Source: https://whyy.org/segments/why-havent-we-gone-back-to-the-moon/
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