Why has America stopped Lunar exploration?

Question

Just curious what everyone else thinks about America showing absolutely no interest in Lunar progression.

I beleive it's because there is no Military Implications or advantages in returning to the moon. But i'm just one person. would love other oppinions!

Answer 1

Because the moon, quite frankly, is a big ball of rock.

now don't get me wrong, its a pretty wonderful moon. Does everything a moon should do. But lets face it, how many times can we go up there for no other purpose than to just look around?

And I agree that colonizing other planets is the only long term guarantee of the survival of the human race. But that will come from technology developed on Earth, not from wandering around on that big old rock.

Answer 2

First, one of the other answerers implied that the former Soviet Union beat the United States in every space related aspect up to the moon landings. Not so, and even the littlest history reading will show that.

The Soviets did launch the first space satellite (after the US revealed it's plans and timetable), the first man in space (after the US revealed it's plans and timetable), the first multi-crewed capsule (ditto), the first landing of a camera carrying capsule on the moon (ditto again) and the first "walk in space" (you guessed it...just after our intent was publicised). So, in effect, the Soviets "one-upped" the US by doing what we had freshly announced we were going to do.

Now, look at the Ranger program (first closeups of the moon), the Surveyor program (the first survivable soft landings on the moon), the Gemini program (first manned vehicle capable of changing orbits (necessary for the Apollo program), Apollo 8 (the first manned orbit of the moon), and Apollo 11, the first manned landing. Also, the first space station was Skylab (US), the first Venus probe, the first successful Mars probes (1965 and following), and ALL the outer solar system exploration has been US space program stuff.

A waste of money they say? Well, the manned mercury, gemini, and apollo programs cost about $25 billion dollars, spread over a ten year period. Thats two and a half billion dollars each year, or about 15 dollars every year for each tax paying US citizen. How much impact do you think THAT would have had on world hunger and disease? Besides, had it not been spent it wouldn't have been "transferred" to other programs...that just doesn't happen.

Now, as to why we have not been back? Well, first, the purpose of Apollo was to get reconaissance-type information and samples from the moon. By the time A-17 was finished there just wasn't much more that could be done without development of new techniques and technology, so basically all that we needed to know had been discovered (or at least the material needed for that had been collected). Plus, that nagging war in the SE Asia area needed our attention. Congress cancelled the rest of the planned landings, and NASA turned it's attention to development of the Space Transportation System, Skylab, and robotic exploration.

Now there are renewed efforts to go back to the moon. There may be water there (at some places near the poles), new techniques and technologies are available, and potential needs for "terraforming" Mars (possibly Venus) are being investigated. We don't go to the moon just to look around, we go because there are larger goals to reach for.

Military applications? None, as you implied. It's so far away communication is uselessly slow, and the moon is only in the sky for half a day, as opposed to 24 hours a day for geosynchronous satellites. Spying? Nope, too far away, huge telescopes would be necessary to see anything on earth resembling the clarity that is available from earth orbit.

Now, probably there are military applications that will be applied in future times, but earth orbit is the place to be for communication and espionage. Unless the Chinese start blowing up spy and communication satellites from other countries. Of course, such an event would lead to the end of our worry about overpopulation for quite some time.

Answer 3

It's well-documented that NASA's budget has been slashed repeatedly over the years. After Apollo 11, Congress saw no reason to continue to give NASA the funding that it wanted - after all, taxpayers don't like higher taxes.

With these budget cuts, NASA was forced to reevaluate its priorities. Manned space flight slowly took a back seat to unmanned missions, such as the Mariner probes, the Viking missions, and a variety of scientific satellites and space telescopes. These missions were (and still are) far more cost-effective than manned explorations. It's a lot cheaper to send a rover to Mars than it is to send people there. Certainly, NASA would like to send people to the Moon again, but going there is prohibitively expensive.

Answer 4

The reason that they wanted to go to the moon is that they wanted to make sure it was not made out of swiss cheese. And wanted a proof that it was not hanging on nothing. Now out of all these scientific endeavors it has been realized by physics that space is a vaccum. Therefore they concluded that the moon is hanging on a vaccum.
Later, as they applied Relativity theory ,and on that basis,they realized that the Earth was not really flat,but instead that it was the Universe that is Flat.
As far as wanting to set a home on the moon? well we dont really need to,because we have lots of land in this country where we can have beautifull homes built upon it.

Answer 5

Because the U.S. Govnt has been analyzing the specimens and there is no need to go back yet... but NASA has planned a lunar mission in 2015

Answer 6

Bush in his first state of the nation speech proclaimed that he was going to make plans for sending humans to mars, after the successful missions of the rovers, but then as you know 911 happened and all the money which could have gone to NASA was used to foot a useless war.

Answer 7

Too many earthly problems like crime,pollution,the war on terror and not enough money for other things,especially things right here on this EARTH warrant far greater attention in the meantime before we can even start to thank about the moon once again.

Answer 8

cause of cuts in the budget

the story behind is much like 'been there, seen it, got the t-shirt'

why should one go for it any longer with manned moon missions if we can send a robot for less the risk, less the cost, and nearly the same results ?

Answer 9

loss of money and absence of political will. Sending adult men to the Moon became high priced and unsafe, and united statesa. opted for the extra value-effective safer commute and area station. Now that has shown to be too high priced and unsafe, and is being scaled back too.

Answer 10

because it is and always has been a collossal waste of money. the lunar landing was only perpetrated to one-up the soviets who had beaten the u.s. in every other facet of space exploration up to that point.
now there's no cold war or military to one-up.