Why is it that after almost 40 yrs NASA has been unsuccessful in establishing a research station on the Moon?

Answer 1

You can't be "Unsuccessful" if you haven't attempted to do it yet. But the major draw back is financing and technical research for needed equipment to sustain habitation by human personnel. Much less expensive than a fully automated station, and then you'd need at least one mechanic. It boils down to two reasons, we can't afford it, and exploration in general has not only been put on the back burner so to speak, but taken off the stove, in the national scene and gone to the private sector. It's a can of worms, so many things can be accomplished that are not, because there's not monies future in it and general public apathy.

Answer 2

The question sounds as if NASA tried and failed. The answer is more like it was never really tried. At present, the benefits of the station do not justify the expense.

Once we went to the moon and collected samples, many of the questions we had were answered. Here applies the law of diminishing returns, where more answers, or more elaborate answers, cost much much more.

What can change the picture is that there are more areas of research, a changing need for answers, or that the exploration cost become lower. The first two factors depend on science and society. The third one also depends on society and science, but it also depends on the moon itself. If we learn there is water and that we can use it for the station, that would drive costs lower. Until some factors change, there will not be a research station.

Answer 3

The problem has to do with COST. Each gram of payload going to the Moon costs $10,000 to get it there.

NASA is an agency of the US Government which has been engaged in fighting a war in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past four years or so at roughly $ 1 Billion per week or month (forget which number is right), and just does not have a lot of surplus funds to conduct such an expensive mission. Take a moment and jot down the amount of things needed to build a research station, figure out how many people might work there, and all the supplies they might need... Then sit down and convert all of the information you collected into payload weight. The numbers will startle you. Oh, yes, you do wish to bring those folks back to Earth, right? So add in Round Trip Tickets (not one way flights). That is a lot of rocket fuel...

Answer 4

Money/fiscal will to do so. As much as people complain about the cost of the shuttle program, fact is in 1996 contstant dollars, the Apollo moon program ran about $200bn bucks, and that was just what it cost to put 20 odd guys in moon orbit and about 10 of them on the moon itself. Now think about how much it would cost to put a permanent base there.

As the nation the U.S. does not have the political will to accomplish this. If somehow such a station appeared to many people to be essential to the survival of the nation, then maybe the $300bn something like this would cost to create and the $50bn/year recurring (rough guess) would be found, but I bet there would be a lot of debate over the necessity.

Answer 5

The question is;if NASA established a research station on the moon,what would they research?

Answer 6

Take in consideration that the moon has 1/6 gravity of that of Earth and since that we really lack the complete technology to do such a thing. The only useful thing you'd want to use the moon for is to establish some sort of colony or use it as a weapon research/development base. *Shrugs* I can't really see any more uses for it than that.

~Lucied

Answer 7

It hasn't been unsuccessful, it hasn't tried. It is only now on the path to establish one in 2024. It is a non-trivial problem, space is an unforgiving environement. I'm working on one of the precursor missions, LCROSS, to determine if there is any water in the permanently shadowed regions of the moon. We are co-manifested with LRO which will map the moon in extremely high detail, also facilitating future lunar missions.

Answer 8

Imagine before you stick the first metal piece on the rocky land of the moon, everything floats and you have a difficulty sticking it to the ground because of the gravity on the moon plus the hard and rocky land conditions.

Answer 9

Because they've spent 40 years and hell knows how many tax dollars on building a reusable vehicle to cut the costs of supplying that station.

Answer 10

Because we don't need one! We've already taken samples from the moon, and also it's not as if you just pitch up a tent! You have to consider oxygen supplies, gravity, fuel etc. etc.