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Comment by wheelerof4te | Hacker News Reader

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We spent the better part of 50 years pouring most of our launch funding (which was reduced compared to the Apollo years) into the Space Shuttle program, which was never as efficient as hoped. (In part because it is a jobs and corporate welfare program as well as a space program.)

Hell, aside from SpaceX and a few similar efforts, we're still pouring most of our launch funding into the Space Shuttle Program, via it's SLS successor - currently over $11 billion spent on a program that has had, to date, one launch.

SpaceX can reliably deliver payloads to orbit at much cheaper prices than anything before. The Moon program had its share of disasters, near-disasters and other failures (Apollo 1 burned with all its crew on the ground). Starship is a vehicle in development and will obviously have all sorts of bugs and edge cases to be worked out.

Apollo missions were done at incredible expense, and didn’t provide any longevity.

We’ve had humans in orbit on the ISS continuously for decades, sent probes to the edge of the solar system, landed multiple robots on Mars, and revolutionized our understanding of space and physics with space telescopes.

The biggest obstacle to space exploration was a contracting that didn’t bring down costs, and the thing that makes space so exciting now is high cadence low cost launches

Wow, really displaying your ignorance here lol

The SpaceX flights are way more efficient and reproducible than the Apollo missions ever were. The only reason they aren't regularly going to the moon is that there isn't a strong incentive to do so.

That’s easy. Give NASA 4-5% of the federal budget like it had in the 60s and we’ll go back in no time. This stuff is ridiculously expensive. It’s not the “how”, it’s the political “why” that doesn’t have an answer right now.

Elon Musk doesn’t have 4-5% of the federal budget and SpaceX is well on their way to doing it. I agree with the parent, there’s something else going on, either with society, or our government.

SpaceX is well in their way to doing it, but 50+ years later, relying on advances in material sciences and production capabilities to reduce the cost. None of this seems fishy to me. As a nation we decided to do something, damn the cost, and when we decided that was no longer important to do, it took decades of advances before advances brought the cost down to the realm that corporations could begin to attempt to do the same.

NASA doesn't have 4-5% of the federal budget but is about to do it again on the Artemis missions with one hand tied behind their backs on Congressionally-mandated designs.

The grandparent is actually arguing that the difficulty we are having now is proof that nasa faked the moon landing something not even worth debunking.

Are you really suggesting what I think you're suggesting?

Pretty sure we can land things on the moon if we needed to. We just placed the James Webb Telescope there. We just don't have the political will or necessity. Ho long was it between the first trip to the South Pole and the first permanent base? 1911 to 1944. And that was on Earth, where supplying that base is much easier than the humongous expenditure it was to go to the Moon or supply a lunar base there.

Sibling comment made a good point about how the hot stuff in science 60-70 years ago was rocketry and physics where now so much "talent" is in "computer science".

Another thing: we are trying to do things a lot better than we did 60 years ago - fully reusable craft that, I assume, practically flies itself.

This generation has too many computer scientists, not enough physicists (and the few physicists remaining are all focused on woo woo).

Why would you need a new generation of physicist to get a rocket on the moon at this point. The physics of doing so are well established.

You need a reason and money to fund it. Which Musk supplied.

Even if the physics is well established, I believe you need people who have spent their 10,000 hours learning and practicing with it in order to make the best use of it.

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