Why have we neglected the Moon so much since the 1970s Apollo missions?

Question

It seems like right after all the Apollo missions we totally forgot about the Moon. Why did we stop exploring it and sending people there?

Answer 1

There's not much to do up there. During the 70's they conducted multiple tests only to find out that the moon isn't really made of cheese, but of some pretty useless rock. Hopefully in the near future we will go back and try some experiments of outer space living conditions.

Answer 2

Because people just don't care.

Apollo 11 was BIG news. The whole world was glued to the TV. Apollo 12 was neat, but nothing like Apollo 11. It didn't help that the camera failed early in the Moon walk so all we had was voices, but before the failure it just looked like Apollo 11, flat featureless ground and a bad black and white picture. Half the world turned off their TV. Apollo 13 was well on its way to getting almost no coverage when the oxygen tank blew up. Then it was big news again. Apollo 14 had a camera at the LM but the astronauts walked so far away that we couldn't see anything. Then Apollo 15 landed in a spectacular mountainous area with a moon car and a camera mounted on it. And a much better camera too. That was the mission I liked the most. We had hours and hours of live color pictures of the astronauts in a setting that finally looked like what we expected the Moon to look like. But Apollos 16 and 17 were just more of the same and people got bored. $25 billion for this? Nobody cared any more. We won the space race, the deed was done, lets move on. That is still the attitude today. And in spite the fact that uninformed people always say we should be able to do it cheaper with the advances in technology of the last 40 years, sadly all those advances are in electronics and not rockets. A rocket that can get to the Moon is still ridiculously expensive and dangerous.

Answer 3

No urgent reason. Apollo 18, 19, and 20 were canceled by using funds cuts. when we did it, public pastime dropped precipitously. each body became riveted to computer screen the first 2 adult men jogging on the Moon, yet by technique of the 0.33 time, it wasn't a huge deal any better. television information did not even conceal Apollo 13 until eventually catastrophe struck and the astronauts' lives were at risk. heavily, how lots of the adult men who've been on the Moon are you able to call? Even i will't do better than 4 or 5. NASA's kit became outfitted by technique of contractors. Apollo became outfitted by technique of North American IIRC; the lunar lander became outfitted by technique of Grumman. at the same time as the landings were canceled, the contractors had no reason to save the stuff round yet protecting it would want to fee them, so as that they finally trashed the plans and retooled the kit. to be in a position to do it again we ought to opposite-engineer the leftover kit that's in museums and exercising consultation the improvements we need (computing gadget kit needs a finished remodel, for instance). yet even once you've each of the kit waiting to do the pastime, attending to the Moon is about two times as demanding as shifting into orbit, and also you're lacking the safe practices information superhighway of having the flexibility to easily deorbit and go back to Earth in a count of hours if some thing is going rather incorrect, like an astronaut has a coronary heart attack or some thing. and persons have not been fairly fascinated in going decrease back to the Moon. there is been no call to placed human beings down there again. we are speaking about it again now, yet there became like a 30-3 hundred and sixty 5 days era the position we in simple terms figured We did it--been there, performed that. no want to do it again in simple terms because.

Answer 4

To put it into perspective,, the cost of sending a ship with people on it was just to high and there was no further reason to go because they (NASA) had studied all they needed,, and the things they learned will also help in the near future missions to the moon to build a camp base there to prepare to travel to mars and eventually beyond,,

Answer 5

We stopped going there as we beat the Russians to the Moon, and as far as the public were concerned, the Moon was 'done'

In 1999 Nasa sent the lunar prospector probe to the Moon to look for ice (It found none.)

We are now of course planning on going back to the Moon, as humans, in the next 20-30 years.

Answer 6

Well, there is actually a moon land planned coming by the year 2020.

We stopped caring about it because congress stopped the funding and the US citizens became uninterested in it.

There is actually a limitless energy resource on the moon called Helium-2. You can read up on it in the book 'Back to the Moon' by Homer Hickam. Though the book is fictional, the energy source is based on fact.

Here is a link to the NASA moon landing web page:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html

Answer 7

In 2018 we will be going back to The Moon to build colonies that will eventually be the tests for our Mars missions around 2030.

Answer 8

Yeah true... but they're planning a mission soon, and anyway the countries that just begin space missions all do their first missions on the moon for eg india, china the developing nations.

Answer 9

We stopped because it had been done. People stopped caring about landing on the moon so NASA moved on to other projects. Also there is no non scientific benefit to going back. When using satellites they can have multiple uses and are therefore more useful. But basically it comes down to we've been there done that. So its time to try new stuff.

Answer 10

Been there done that. There is a phrase by someone it goes: ...and there are no more worlds to conquer. I heard this on Die Hard and would love to know who said it and the entire phrase.