If man really landed on the moon then why haven't we been back? Why is there an international space station but no attempt to build a moon station?
2007-02-06 00:48:43 · 17 answers · asked by leanna1700 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Money, money, money; it was too expensive. Once we got there, the country and the government lost interest. We had beaten the Russians there.
2007-02-06 00:52:56 · answer #1 · answered by Gene 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
What many people don't seem to realize is that the moon is a thousand times as far away from earth as the space station. After the Apollo program, the decision was made to put money into near earth orbit capabilities. So we made Skylab and now the ISS and have devoted a lot of time with space shuttle missions (the space shuttle does not go very far up, by the way). The really heavy lifting machines like the Saturn V have not been improved upon nor have more been made.
Why did we decide to stay in near earth orbit rather than going higher? Well, it is expensive and dangerous! Remember that we almost lost Apollo 13 completely. Many of the other missions had small to medium glitches. If something goes seriously wrong half way to the moon, there is no way to do anything to help.
2007-02-06 09:19:06 · answer #2 · answered by mathematician 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Practicality. The "cool" factor is big: wow, we've got people walking around on the Moon! But the scientific case for putting people on the Moon is pretty small, especially since we could send up hundreds of robotic craft for the price of one manned mission.
Even the space station is more of a political project than a scientific project. There are so many other more important scientific projects to spend money on. Science funding is already only a miniscule portion of government spending--why shift funding for real science to super-feel-good, impress the public projects?
I personally think that space exploration would be better if it were funded by private groups, rather than government, so that people who _want_ to pay for it can and those who don't want to don't have the government force them to through taxes. (Of course I think that about almost all government projects.)
2007-02-06 09:02:40 · answer #3 · answered by Faeldaz M 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Staying on the question, it was too expensive, and the public lost interest. Most of the other answers have much truth in them, except I think the plan back to the moon is more like the mid-2020's. Again, its too expensive. Look for more robotic missions. the ISS is both political and scientific, as stated already. It may be used as a launch pad to Mars, but there are a lot of ideas/plans for the end result. I believe it is a testing ground for the space technology to come, again, as stated.
I had to put in my two cents, sorry...
2007-02-06 09:16:54 · answer #4 · answered by joopster8505 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
why bother? we had seen pretty much all we needed to....the space station is a stepping off point...a moon station would be infinitely harder to build and be of less use because of its distance and even the slight gravity of the moon would negatively impact the experiments being performed on the space station..we are taking the baby steps into space with the space station..we will learn to walk soon enough
2007-02-06 08:59:19 · answer #5 · answered by kerfitz 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
It's like asking why you would build a tree house in your back yard rather then in the middle of a forest. It costs mucho money to even get to the moon. For the same cost, you could build several orbiting space stations.
2007-02-06 17:38:04 · answer #6 · answered by Take it from Toby 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
A Moon station is planned. But why would we want to go back again and again?
We found out what we wanted to know. The moon wasn't made out of cheese!
2007-02-06 11:23:31 · answer #7 · answered by Bigdog 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The ISS is a research facility to provide humanity more experience with working in space, which will be imperative to long-term lunar missions. NASA is actually planning a return to the moon in the late 2010's and even a base at the Lunar poles.
2007-02-06 09:03:56 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
The moon landing was too tough to repeat regularly. We sprinted there to beat the Russians, but didn't build a program to support continued operations to the moon.
2007-02-06 08:57:04 · answer #9 · answered by Onadrad 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I believe the US has traveled a couple times to the moon.
I know that the AirForce is intreasted in space technology. Just because NASA want go dosen't mean that the the Americans AirForce want try..
2007-02-06 11:19:28 · answer #10 · answered by jack 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No balls and skewed priorities. Nobody gives a crap about the 18 billion dollar space station. The search for LIFE on other planets would motivate and excite people.
2007-02-06 10:08:44 · answer #11 · answered by stargazergurl22 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋