
If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, Why Can’t We Put a Man on the Moon? - dbattaglia
https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-we-can-put-a-man-on-the-moon-why-cant-we-put-a-man-on-the-moon-1514833480
======
Al-Khwarizmi
This seems to happen to a lot of things.

In my city (random Spanish mid-sized city, around 250K population) there is
often debate about building a light rail or tram public transport line. But it
is always dismissed by the administration for being too expensive, pharaonic,
disproportionate for a city of this size, etc.

Doing some research on the history of the city, I discovered that not only
there were several tram lines in the early 20th century, but there was even a
tram line that went all the way to a nearby town of population around 15K, 22
km away. If anyone proposed a tram line like that today, I think they would be
dismissed as being kidding for proposing such extravagant spending.

This, in a context where Spain is a much richer country than it was back then.
I often wonder what went wrong.

~~~
kalleboo
I lived in a Swedish city of a similar size. They had a tram network that was
dismantled bit by bit until it was completely shut down in 1973 because it was
seen as unmodern. And now 40 years later they're all talking about building
trams again since they're so modern...

~~~
jandrese
Even in the US you see this. There was a light rail line[1] that ran west from
Washington DC connecting several small farming communities in the early 1900s.
It was dismantled and turned into a bike trail and now we are spending
billions of dollars[2] to build a Metro expansion parallel to the old rail
line.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_and_Old_Dominion_Ra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_and_Old_Dominion_Railroad)

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-
gridlock/wp/2016/02/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-
gridlock/wp/2016/02/17/costs-mounting-for-phase-2-of-the-silver-line/)

------
kraig911
Maybe we realize now going to the moon from a financial standpoint is purely
political. If there was a efficient way and industrial need for plenty of
resources from the moon maybe they'd make it possible. But right now grandiose
measures of showing off your countries genitals kind of creates a narrative of
wasted resources to me right now.

I've heard the argument that spending on stuff like this creates jobs and
economy and I'm sure it does. But work a soup kitchen for a day and you'd
realize we have economies of wealth built on the back of despair and
hopelessness.

Our society needs to change to be a space faring one. Maybe I'm stupid and a
traveling to space would initiate the change we need. I just can't see how.

~~~
reaperducer
> But right now grandiose measures of showing off your countries genitals kind
> of creates a narrative of wasted resources to me right now

Countries spend all kinds of money showing off their genitals in much worse
ways. Think North Korea's nuclear weapons, or any of the Western nations'
colonization follies.

How much has been spent on Olympic games in the last couple of decades? Would
that be enough to get us to the moon?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _How much has been spent on Olympic games in the last couple of decades?
> Would that be enough to get us to the moon?_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games)

Given the double-digit billions in operating budgets per game, we could
probably get a Mars program going for the cost of two or three of those games.

~~~
nine_k
If only we could attract as many spectators, and command the ad budgets ti
match.

------
paulus_magnus2
Economy. If Moon was made of gold it wouldn't be worth going there for it [1].
Perhaps reusable spacecraft can change that.

For strategic / military reasons (money no objective) we can achieve much more
than if profit is the only motivation.

[1. need a better source?]
[https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/22059/if-the-
moon-...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/22059/if-the-moon-were-
solid-gold-how-far-away-would-it-have-to-be-to-not-be-economic)

Edit:

Elon Musk: With New SpaceX Tech, Rocket Costs Will Drop By A Factor of 100

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/908254079092002816?ref_s...](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/908254079092002816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Felon-
musk-with-new-spacex-tech-rocket-costs-will-drop-by-a-factor-of-100%2F)

Also analysis / spaculatoin for BFR. Keep in mind we're only talking about
sending stuff to Mars, not retrieving it.
[http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3343/1](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3343/1)

Edit 2 federal court set the value of the moon rocks at $50,800 per gram based
on how much it cost the U.S. government to retrieve the samples between 1969
and 1972.

[https://www.space.com/11804-nasa-moon-rock-sting-
apollo17.ht...](https://www.space.com/11804-nasa-moon-rock-sting-
apollo17.html)

~~~
Robotbeat
But we ARE talking about retrieving stuff from Mars: the BFS must be returned
to Earth to be reused. It's also capable of bringing people back from Mars,
and that's supposed to be included in the $200k/person ticket price. Assuming
at least 200kg of human plus consumables per person for the trip back, that
implies that anything worth at least $1000/kg would be worth sending back.

So I think Musk is actually wrong when he says that he can BOTH send people to
Mars super cheap with return tickets AND that there could not possibly be
something of enough value on Mars to return to Earth even if you had cocaine
($100,000/kg?) prepackaged on the surface (gold is $35,000/kg or something).

...not that I expect a vibrant Mars export economy or anything. Musk's basic
point about not expecting Mars to fully and profitably pay for itself with
physical exports is correct.

~~~
gruez
>even if you had cocaine ($100,000/kg?)

it's $100k+ retail value, but wholesale value is much below that, more in line
with gold.

~~~
Robotbeat
Sure, but he was trying to pick something super expensive, even more than
gold.

~~~
classicsnoot
Saffron, platinum, human organs...

~~~
coolspot
Prepackaged human organs on the Moon? That would be weird.

~~~
classicsnoot
I can totally imagine a Chinese Prison facility that houses any nation's bad
guys for a fee and churns out prepackaged organs. The tiny Albert Speer in my
head can even see the benefit of such a system. And to be honest, China
already does it to their prison populations. Putting the Organ Dispenser on
the moon would just be a stylized recreation of the original concept of
"international waters".

------
T-A
Edit: nope, looks like it's this one: "Stepping Stones: Economic Analysis of
Space Transportation Supplied From NEO Resources"

[https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/eso_fin...](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/eso_final_report.pdf)

\---

I think the report in question is "NASA's In Space Manufacturing Initiatives:
Conquering the Challenges of In-Space Manufacturing":

[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?print=yes&R=20170011108](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?print=yes&R=20170011108)

These may also be interesting:

"NASA's In Space Manufacturing Initiatives: Overview and Update",
[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?print=yes&R=20170011109](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?print=yes&R=20170011109)

"Additive Manufacturing for Human Space Exploration",
[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?print=yes&R=20170011644](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?print=yes&R=20170011644)

~~~
maccam94
I really want to see asteroid mining prioritized, as well as a space station
capable of permanent human habitation (either partial or full gravity). A
space station is also preferable to another planet for our next big space
endeavor IMO because it is easier to get materials to and from it (no extra
gravity well to deal with). Also, I feel like a lot of people think "ah,
everything has to be done differently because space is a zero-G environment",
but I bet it would be easier to adapt a lot of traditional technologies,
engineering processes, and biological elements in a rotating station. Once we
have the ability to do fabrication and construction in space, everything
becomes much cheaper. Lastly, if researchers need to experiment in zero-G, we
could construct zero-G modules adjacent to the center of the ring for
experimentation.

The primary blocker for a rotating station as far as I know has been the mass
requirement. If you have a structure above a certain rotational speed with a
radius that is too small, the occupants are likely to become nauseous. From
the research I've seen, the minimum size for a viable rotating station would
be about 600 tons[1]. Moving that amount of mass into orbit would have been
extremely expensive, but Falcon Heavy could launch it for under $1.5B, and the
BFR for even less.

[1]:
[http://www.nss.org/settlement/space/GlobusRotationPaper.pdf](http://www.nss.org/settlement/space/GlobusRotationPaper.pdf)
(page 22)

~~~
GCU-Empiricist
It'll happen when there's a business model that reduces the operating margin
for a company. My best guess is this will be when the price for lithium or
trans-uranics goes up significantly, or some engineering process requires
microgravity conditions.

~~~
extrapickles
Lithium will never be that expensive/rare. Its somewhat common, just we
haven’t needed as much as we do now.

Some rare earths are getting close to being worth it. That why a few companies
are looking at nearby asteroids to see if they have enough of them.

------
GlenTheMachine
There are a lot of answers here about how expensive Apollo was, and about how
those expenses haven't really gone away. Those answers are basically right:
putting humans on the moon was, and would still be, enormously expensive.

But there's another factor at play which I haven't seen any mention of, which
is that our risk tolerance as a culture has dropped considerably since then.
We went from Mercury, to Gemini, to Apollo, in an INSANELY short period of
time. We went from having never launched anybody into space, to Apollo 11, in
ten years; we went from never having launched a Saturn V to putting three
humans on top of one in thirteen months. We lost three astronauts due to
multiple design flaws in the Command Capsule, then redesigned the capsule and
launched it with astronauts in it in eighteen months.

None of that could happen now. And the reason can only partly be blamed on
NASA losing its mojo. In truth, the entire spaceflight community has developed
far a more comprehensive, reliable safety culture. But that culture is by
necessity much slower than it was then. Nobody in the industry could move as
quickly as NASA did in the mid 1960s. NASA of today can't - but neither can
SpaceX, or Blue Origin, or Sierra Nevada, or anyone else I know of.

Even if we wanted to, we would have to re-educate our engineers. Engineers are
taught how to do program management starting as undergraduates. We have an
entire generation of aerospace engineers who have been taught to move at
deliberate, conservative speed, to make sure nobody gets killed. The human
inertia inherent in our current engineering culture just wouldn't allow us to
go back to the speed of the 1960's.

A slower, more comprehensive safety culture costs even more money, but more
importantly it requires financial support from Congress and the White House
over a much longer period of time in order for a mission to make it from
proposal to launch - support which is extremely hard to sustain across
administrations.

And (personal opinion here) society _as a whole_ is supportive of - indeed,
has demanded and driven - these changes. We would not tolerate the US
government spending 2% to 3% of the entire federal budget on a manned
spaceflight program, and then losing an entire crew in a pre-launch accident,
and then returning to launch in 18 months.

------
aurizon
They need driverless, conductorless subways/trams in enclosed tubular right of
way with passengers entering from one side and exiting from the other, via
offset doors. Think of the days when you had elevators with operators who were
paid for pushing the floor number for you - (a carry-over from the cable-pull
hole in the wall days when operators were needed.) These trams were killed by
the wages of the operators, in much the same way that modern subways are
ruined costwise by the wages of the drivers and conductors who each have
hourly wage costs of $50 or more = large ticket costs and avoidance to car
use. In effect opportunists grabbed all the $$

In the moon race, NASA is so burdened by legacy wages and other costs AND the
fact that Congressional opportunists grab the money that NASA was prevented
from that course.

------
johnminter
The author answers the question in the first sentence. It is not that we
can't, the problem is that it is not cost effective to do so. Or, as the
cliche goes, "It's all about the Benjamins".

The inconvenient truth is that the US has a national debt of over $21T and a
federal bureaucracy with a reputation of being unable to bring projects to
completion on budget. Think of this in a more personal context: you need to
plan to support yourself in your old age (retirement). Your lifestyle depends
on a successful return on investment. What percentage of your savings would
you invest in this? Where does this fit on your hierarchy of "needs" vs
"wants"?

~~~
stupidcar
Your analogy makes no sense. America isn't a person, doesn't have a limited
working life, and isn't going to "retire".

The solution to an inefficient federal bureaucracy and a large national debt
isn't to cut economically irrelevant spending in those areas where the US
enjoys an actual advantage over other countries. It's to improve the
bureaucracy and balance spending in meaningful ways.

Unfortunately, any sane attempt at improvement is blocked by "small
government" Republicans, who deliberately impede evolutionary improvements in
government functioning in the hope that, by forestalling them, they can hasten
some future libertarian revolution, wherein it becomes politically possible to
eliminate all social programmes altogether.

In order to maintain their false image as being in favor of fiscal constraint,
these same Republicans attack easy targets like NASA. At the same time, they
protect insanely profligate projects like the F-35 fighter, which provide
essentially socialist redistribution to defence contractors in their own
districts. In your flawed comparison, it'd be like someone complaining about
his children's spend on candy, while buying a dozen broken Ferraris every day.

~~~
valuearb
Calling this a republican problem is being willfully ignorant of the problems
in our government structure. We didn’t get $21B in debt cause of republicans,
or democrats, but because of congress.

Congress directed NASA to spend $20B to build the SLS, a super heavy launch
system built by congresses favorite contractors. It won’t be reusable at all,
ever launch rocket will be burned up in the atmosphere. Each launch will cost
about $2B, and the first version will only put in orbit about the same amount
of cargo a Falcon Heavy will for $90M.

The SLS won’t ever be canceled despite its awful economics because it’s
diverting billions to favorite contractors like Boeing. That’s the problem.
NASA could buy launch capacity for a fraction of the cost using commercial
providers, but key congressional districts get no windfall from that.

~~~
cryptoz
The problems being discussed here happen at least 2 orders of magnitude larger
than you are talking about. The little NASA journey to SLS has effectively no
impact on the grander US government debt or the issues causing it.

The issues causing the debt are much much bigger problems that last
_centuries_ and are largely Republican-driven. They are things like
overspending on War, keeping the poor population poor (war on drugs, cutting
education spending, etc), that keep the population of the US unable to earn
money and pay taxes, etc.

The problems are large and structural and they are not with NASA or their
decision making. They are with Republicans.

~~~
valuearb
Again, there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. They both are
responsible for the war on drugs because it’s politicalky popular. The few
Opponents are either very liberal democrats or libertarian republicans.

Secondly, we are spending more on education than virtually any time on our
history.

Thirdly, Obama was a democrat, at times had political majorities in congress,
yet he never pulled us out of Iraq or Afghanistan, because it would be
politically unpopular, and cost significant democratic party funders billions
on contracting revenues.

Trump says he would cancel the F-35, but dame thing, same reasons.

Imperial congress has a turnover rate akin to the members of the communist
party in the glory days of the USSR. They are all professional politicians who
get re-elected by voting for what their financial backers want.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/g1NEH](http://archive.is/g1NEH)

~~~
draugadrotten
[https://archive.is/PO1WZ/image](https://archive.is/PO1WZ/image)

------
ThomPete
The question is why would we put a man on the moon?

I grew up with Moonbase Alpha (although I am not expecting to be thrown into
space by a major explosion) and want this as much as anyone else but is there
any reason (mining, strategic, know benefits to research) which justifies the
price?

~~~
ams6110
That really explains why it happened the first time. Price was not a concern.
We were on almost a war footing to get it done.

The whole reason that NASA stopped innovating after about 1972 was that the
costs were unsustainable.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd say the costs were _projected_ to be unsustainable. There apparently was
this whole episode with the Congress realizing that Wernher von Braun & crew
are aiming for Mars, and deciding to cut the party short before it gets out of
control[0].

\--

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#Loss_of_political_suppor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#Loss_of_political_support_and_cancellation)

------
indubitable
The article answers itself: _" NASA’s traditional manned programs for deep
space exploration, costing well over $3 billion annually, continue to enjoy
solid bipartisan backing among lawmakers and major agency contractors."_ That
quote is speaking largely of the SLS. It's supposed to essentially be the
Space Shuttle 2.0, but it's often just referred to as the Senate Launch System
for good reason. We've spending billions of dollars on that program and it's
not going anywhere anytime soon. This [1] is the Wiki entry from 2011
detailing the program's promises, which have been constantly 'reimagined.' In
reality it's mostly a giant pork project.

Ultimately it's being driven by congressmen who only care about getting their
kickbacks and it's being developed by ULA, an anticompetitive merger of Boeing
and Lockheed, who only care about profit. And the companies themselves are
also falling apart. This [2] is Lockheed Martin's CEO. One of the largest
aerospace companies in the world is headed by a person who has absolutely no
background whatsoever in aerospace or related technologies. Until 2015, this
[3] was the head of Boeing - same story. Perhaps not coincidentally, since
Boeing put an aerospace engineer in charge - they have sharply changed their
direction and competitive outlook.

We have an increasingly corrupt government contracting work to companies who
are driven only by money. Musk's success and the government's success in the
60s have something very simple in common. They were not driven by greed or
short term self interest, but big picture ideology and aspirations. And it
seems the whole notion of aspirations, beyond earning lots of money, is
something that is somehow fading in society.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Space_Launch_Syst...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Space_Launch_System&oldid=457761065)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marillyn_Hewson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marillyn_Hewson)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McNerney](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McNerney)

------
KKKKkkkk1
Looks like commenters here did not read the subtitle: _Outside study blames
NASA’s bureaucracy and contracting practices for delaying lunar missions_

~~~
anilgulecha
Well, the article does also say:

> NASA has routinely faced similar criticism from some lawmakers and advocates
> of commercial space ventures, but seldom in a report released by the agency
> itself.

------
mcguire
Not a WSJ subscriber, so I can only see the first two paragraphs...

" _NASA’s current plans for returning astronauts to the moon aren’t affordable
and likely won’t produce sustainable, long-term economic benefits, according
to an independent research study commissioned by the agency._ "

As an ex-NASA contractor (at the NASA Enterprise Applications Competency
Center, and yes, I think that name illustrates some of the problems of NASA),
I completely agree. Management is extremely broken. Fifedoms are the major
organizational component. Personalities are the driving principles. No one
solves problems; they work around them. Going through the motions of the
established procedures without understanding is expected to produce the
optimal result.

On the other hand, all of this is a direct result of the funding model.
Legislative and administrative priorities change every few years. Much of the
priorities involve spreading contracts across important Congressional
districts. It's not a surprise that the plans they come up with are PowerPoint
schemes that sound good but have no real chance of success.

An example: the Constellation program was supposed to re-use the shuttle solid
rocket boosters to save money. Sounds good, right? Until an aerospace engineer
and solid rocket dude pointed out that they needed more thrust than the SSRBs
provide. Proposed solution? Add another segment (of solid rocket motor) to the
SRB. Unfortunately, that actually requires a complete redesign of the solid
rocket motor. It would probably be more effective and cheaper to start from
scratch. BTW, as far as I could determine, the current SLS program is the
Constellation program with the names filled off.

(Said AE friend works for NASA building web apps because "they fly and that
[pointing at the 1/5 scale model of Aries-1] doesn't.")

" _Released last month without publicity, the report advocates using asteroids
to produce fuel..._ "

But here we have an example of the same problem. Have one hard problem you
apparently can't solve? Replace it with 10 harder problems that sound better.
Pure public relations.

~~~
dkonofalski
ProTip™️: Copy and paste the headline of the article into Google to get the
full article. I really need to write a Chrome extension for this but haven't
had the time. :(

~~~
mcguire
Didn't that stop working recently? Or was that the NYT?

~~~
dkonofalski
It worked for me to read the rest of the article so it might be NYT that
you're thinking of.

PS. You may have to do the search in incognito mode as it might log a cookie
that you've visited the page already.

------
mezuzi
If you can read a wsj article, why can't you read it?

------
jasonmaydie
I think the real question is why we want to put a man on the moon. Imagine you
climbed mount Everest with no climbing equipment and then 30 years later
someone asked you why you haven't done it again.

------
PatchMonkey
WaitWaitWait... Nasa had its peak funding during those Moon landing years.
We've let that equipment dryrot, switched to new versions, run those into the
ground, slashed the budget repeatedly (and again over NASA's climate change
research), privatized everything possible, let the best engineers retire,
underpaid _and_ underutilized their replacements until they left...

And somehow we have the gaul to wonder "why is going to the moon not working?"

Its almost like we're asking for something for nothing. Scientists and
Engineers need to eat too. We need to _buy_ new hardware. Train new people. If
we wait too long, Musk will buy Cape Canaveral. We've already let Houston get
turned into a museum rather than a launch pad.

I dont care how much you're gonna blame _bureaucracy_ for this - this is poor
leadership at the helm of our nation to gaslight folks this way.

------
steve0210
In order to efficiently place people into space we would need a robotics based
economy. Robots would need to build the rockets and fly the rockets. Humans
would design the rockets and tell them where to go. Mission control would be
replaced with one flight director observing an AI which monitors everything.

------
foxyv
This is the one hope I have, with huge amounts of wealth concentrating in a
few people's hands we may see pie in the sky stuff like Moon colonies and
space tourism start up.

------
ogdoad
Because putting a man on the moon would be putting a man on the moon!

------
zamalek
An additional reason is that expertise died out with the end of funding. We
had exactly one generation that tackled this problem - there has been no
opportunity for them to hand down their experience. We're not starting from
scratch, but we're certainly worse-off than we were at the _end_ of the space
race - scientists and engineers will have to learn from books and papers,
rather than having an expert around to guide them.

------
partycoder
Because the Apollo Program happened during Bretton Woods, a period of time
where America had virtually infinite money.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege#Oppositio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege#Opposition_in_France)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Because the Apollo Program happened during Bretton Woods_

We are still under the Bretton Woods system, more or less. Almost 2/3rds of
foreign currency reserves held by central banks are held in U.S. dollars [1].
If anything, real interest rates are _lower_ today than they were in the
1960s.

[1]
[http://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2017/03/31/pr17108-IMF-R...](http://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2017/03/31/pr17108-IMF-
Releases-Data-on-the-Currency-Composition-of-Foreign-Exchange-Reserves)

~~~
partycoder
Yes but the US does not allow audits on their gold reserves.

They could print as many dollar bills they wanted until the Nixon shock.

That ended, and as a consequence the economy is not doing as well right now.

If not but because of exclusive deals (e.g: oil) it would be very hard to
justify the dollar current value.

------
Tempest1981
Slight tangent but related: Andy Weir's new book _Artemis_ has some good
scientific details about _living_ on the moon.

Some future cost estimates on getting there:
[https://www.marketplace.org/2017/11/27/world/blog-what-
econo...](https://www.marketplace.org/2017/11/27/world/blog-what-economy-
artemis-can-tell-us-about-life-earth)

------
jl6
You can’t put a man on the moon but your grandparents could.

~~~
TeMPOraL
"Back when I was your age, I had to go to work 400 000 km. In near 0K cold for
3 days. Upwell! Both ways!"

~~~
nkrisc
If you were in direct sunlight for those 3 days to the moon I'd be more
concerned about being hot than cold.

------
Robotbeat
Simply put, we need a lander. If we had a lander, we could use existing
rockets to get to Mars via Earth orbit rendezvous (see Gemini, also ISS is
regularly refueled and boosted by visiting vehicles). But we spent all of our
exploration money on an expensive rocket (and a capsule that is much heavier
than it needs to be...).

------
mohi13
Have been wondering the same for quite sometime. None of the mentioned reasons
seems convincing enough.

------
TylerE
THere is little POINT in putting a man on the moon after you've done it.

We have plenty of moon rock to run experiments on.

Any micro/low gravity experiment can be run cheaper in LEO.

There aren't any valuable resources there to exploit.

It's a bit like asking why we don't build a habitat on the bottom of the
Marians Trench - we COULD, but why WOUDL we?

~~~
sillysaurus3
Because it's awesome. :)

I mean, we burn piles of money just for fun. May as well burn a pile of money
to put someone on the moon again. Doing it just because we can is a fine
reason.

"Still got it!"

One tweak, though. Rather than forcing them to find a reason to go, i.e.
gathering moon rocks, they should just let the astronauts play around. That's
the goal. Go there, then turn on a webcam and romp around for a few days.

That would get the world thinking. And that'd be pretty cool.

~~~
Pigo
I wish more people were inspired by Gene Roddenberry's vision of an ideal
human society. I know it's a science fiction pipe dream because we're always
held back by the lowest common denominator, but if mankind moved past the need
for acquisition and power all that would be left is working together to
achieve goals that make everyone's life more meaningful. We have to wait for
meaningful goals to intersect with acquisition and power.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I for one am in full cognitive dissonance about that. On the one hand, I
understand how much of a pipe dream Star Trek is, and on the other hand, I
strongly believe it sets a standard worth aiming for.

~~~
Pigo
I guess that's how I feel too. I would never preach this gospel, but I find it
inspirational.

------
Animats
Because, half a century later, it's not any cheaper to do it than it was then.

~~~
maccam94
It's recently gotten way cheaper.

Cost per kilogram delivered to LEO:

Saturn V (used for the Moon landing mission): $8,250

Falcon 9: $2,700 (price for an expendable launch)

BFR (hypothetical, in development rocket): $500

~~~
sytelus
In inflation adjusted dollars? I would have still thought its 10X cheaper now
because of all the learnings plus much lower cost computing and other
engineering enhancements.

 _Back in 1973, the total cost of the Apollo program reported to Congress was
$25.4 billion. By far the most expensive parts of the mission were the Apollo
spacecraft (the Command Modules, the Lunar Modules) and the monstrous Saturn V
launch vehicles. A single Saturn V launch cost up to $375 million in 1969 —
or, in today’s money, a few billion dollars.

In 2009, NASA looked back at the cost of the Apollo program in its entirety,
and arrived at a figure of $170 billion in 2005 dollars (or around $200
billion in today’s money). Compare these costs to modern day space travel,
where companies like SpaceX charge just $133 million to launch a spacecraft to
the International Space Station. The Falcon Heavy, which will be comparable to
the Saturn IV, will be in the same price region._

[https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186600-apollo-11-moon-
la...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186600-apollo-11-moon-
landing-45-years-looking-back-at-mankinds-giant-leap)

~~~
frangipane
Safety. Back then it was basically part of the Cold War. Today, what are you
asking the people to risk their lives for? Making things civilian-safe is
expensive.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
People risk their lives all the time for sillier reasons than going to space,
sometimes without even getting paid for it.

~~~
frangipane
Sure, so we might not stop an eccentric rich adventurer from self-funding an
effort like this. But that doesn't necessarily mean the government would
sponsor it, or allow people to be employed to do it.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Well if your justification for that is because people might die, I'm afraid
you'll find that the government is more than happy to sponsor and employ
people for projects with rather high fatality rates.

~~~
frangipane
Aside from the military? Federal projects are very safety conscious. That was
the whole point.

------
m3kw9
Maybe because doin anything else that is slightly more complicated than a few
experiments is gonna cost exponentially more and the budgets won’t get
approved.

------
goldensnit
I thought helium-3 was a viable and necessary resource to put people on the
moon. Is it not?

------
Exuma
So how much would it cost to send someone to the moon again?

------
coliveira
We can't because the USA prefers to create more bombs and other war machines
rather than invest in science.

~~~
gozur88
We would never have done it the first time if not for military competition
with the USSR.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Doesn't mean we have to keep competing militarily if we could go to space
instead.

(Though there is potential for another military race there too - the first
country to put a deorbiting system on a near-Earth rock wins.)

~~~
mikejb
Military competition is always necessary. You need to be able to defend
yourself, and for that, you cannot fall too far behind.

I agree with you when we get to the offensive use of weapons. Though the US is
only one of a number of players in that field.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, I have no illusion that military one-upping is going away any time soon.
My point was only that while it's true it was military competition that opened
access to space, we don't have to forever justify space exploration by
military applications. Private industry around space, and NewSpace in
particular, is a good step towards that.

Military competitions is what gave us microwave tech. Doesn't mean that if
world peace suddenly happened, we would stop producing microwave ovens.

------
ElijahLynn
Are most of the comments here based on the headline alone? This is a paywall
and I am not seeing many comments discussing the article itself, just the
headline (question).

------
Pica_soO
Because capitalism, as religion while in its optimization frenzy- cripples the
ability's of mankind? Reaching the moon already was only done to compete with
a faction outside the reference system. Without commies to race and lean
against, the western system decayed to just another nice decorated, well
managed cotton plantation.

There is no price on the far future events, such as bollide strikes. If there
where, suddenly the moon would have holiday resorts.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Nicely put.

Though this is not caused by the religious aspects of modern capitalism, but
by its core mechanism of work - people are forced to work on what earns them
and protects their short-term profit (poor people to eat, rich people to not
become poor people).

There seem to be only few people on the planet with simultaneously enough
wealth _and_ focused will to tell the market where to go, as opposed to being
directed by the market - I'm thinking about people like Gates and Musk.
Fortunately, one of them is hell-bent on getting to Mars; without that forcing
function, we'd probably be talking about scrapping ISS by now.

(I don't feel like you can blame situation in NASA purely on capitalism
though, at least not directly. They don't play the capitalism game. But they
are controlled by politicians, and politicians play the capitalism game.)

~~~
drdeca
Politicians play the politics game.

This game involves people acting with self interest, and relates in some ways
to access to/control of resources. This is the case regardless of economic
system.

"Capitalism is moloch, yes, but government is also moloch. Anarchy is also
moloch."

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's why I wrote "indirectly". Politicians play the politics game, but the
particulars of that game is in big way determined by the economic system of a
country. In the US, politicians try to game the election process, and that
involves allocating resources in a way that ensures their electability. The
end result is things like turning NASA's space efforts into a giant jobs
program. Politicians under a (hypothetical) different economic system would
face different pressures, maybe even aligned with pursuing longer-term
projects.

------
alexnewman
NASA can’t put a man on the moon, but Elon soon will make putting two lambos
into lunar transfer orbit with the falcon heavy

~~~
PakG1
You sure it's not Tesla Roadsters?

~~~
mikejb
The (single) Tesla Roadster is going on a transfer orbit to Mars.

(Actually, the Tesla is 'just' going into a heliocentric orbit with it's
apogee around the Mars orbit. That is sufficient to prove that it can get to
Mars because it's just a matter of timing, which is _relatively_ trivial, but
it doesn't crash into another Planet and upsets planetary protection officers
- yes, that's a job)

------
nnq
Why don't more people realize that _infecting as much of the cosmos with
ourselves_ should be one of the MAIN GOALS of Humanity?!

Ergo, space exploration technology should be a priority, even at massive
costs, and even when those cost are measured in human lives and human pain and
suffering. This, plus "defeating aging", plus "achieving superhuman general-
purpose intelligence" (either by augmenting/improving human I or by developing
AIs). _Almost nothing else matters besides these._ What fucked up global
leadership did we end up with that they seem to have completely forgot this?

~~~
kazagistar
You might wanna justify those claims? Having a bunch of oppressed miserable
humans rules by tyrannical AIs or whatever seems quite a bit worse then living
happily on our single planet.

~~~
megaman22
Better to have the seeds of humanity spread across many baskets, rather than
in a single one that is perpetually endangered by an unlucky intersection with
a rock.

Who knows if we'll ever be able to actually get outside our local system, but
we're never going to figure out how to do it if we can't even setup shop in
the cosmic equivalent of our front yard.

------
alexnewman
What evidence leads you to believe that nasa is currently run as efficiently
or as innovative as during say the first half of Apollo. Everything I’ve heard
from people who worked there is that it’s generally become more and more of
nightmare

~~~
mruniverse
You ask for evidence, then follow up with "I heard from people..."?

~~~
aeorgnoieang
People telling you things is evidence.

~~~
alexnewman
Actually,that's a good point! People telling me things isn't exactly evidence.
I wonder what pure evidence would look like?

~~~
aeorgnoieang
No, it _is exactly_ evidence. But, as you seem to be aware, each kind or
instance of evidence should be weighed differently, i.e. stronger evidence
should sway your beliefs more strongly.

People telling you things may not be particularly _strong_ evidence, but you
should still probably update your beliefs at least a little.

------
nunobrito
This will go on until one day a large enough government admits that moon
landings back in the 60s/70s were filmed, instead of real.

The large majority of people here are based in facts instead of religion and
dogmas. As a fact-based society, we should be able to look from a distance and
re-evaluate the facts with a colder perspective.

From what I observe, every year we are either 5 year away from settling on the
moon (or Mars), every year there are nn reasons why it didn't happen (loop and
repeat since the last 50 years).

Very few doubt the fact that selfies of astronauts smiling directly at the sun
are possible (without injury).

Very few wonder why the first landing was a success, right on the first try
even as other agencies (SpaceX) iteratively fail on the first runs.

Very few ask why the the original recordings don't exist any longer, only
botched TV recordings.

The effect of radiation outside the earth shield is simply too strong. We have
always sent animals during any space milestone before humans. Look up what
happened to them, if you can find the records.

I'm an engineer. If possible, would like to see humans on the moon during my
lifetime. Instead, we are taught that the sun orbits around the earth and burn
apostates on the public square. We can do better.

Happy 2018! :-)

~~~
ourmandave
You forgot the /s

