When NASA built the space shuttles in the early 1980s, why didn't they make them capable of going to the Moon?

Answer 1

Well we went to the moon in the late 60 and the 70s so we acchived that goal so we just moved on to diffrent goals that did not involve the moon.

Answer 2

For the same reason that they didn't make the Titanic capable of crossing land or a tank capable of crossing the ocean. It was simple a design feature. The shuttle wasdesigned as nothing more than a ferry to stations in low Earth orbit. Had the original plan actually been followed through in its entirety there would have been a number of space stations in orbit to be visited by shuttle flights. The cancellation of most of the space program apart from the shuttle left it looking rather sad, as by the time it was flown most of its planned tasks were no longer applicable.

Going to the Moon is an entirely different design problem, just as crossing the ocean on Earth is a different design problem from crossing a desert.

Answer 3

It is remarkable, but the average Joe (and this guy is obviously one) have so little knowledge of the space program that they don't even realise that the shuttle is not really a space ship.

It is basically an aircraft that is placed into orbit by a rocket.

When it returns, it drops out of orbit until it reaches dense enough atmosphere to "fly" down to a runway.

You should know this just by watching TV - obviously your powers of observation are limited, as is half the population.

Did you notice there are no runways on the moon?

Do you recall there is no air on the moon (aircraft could not fly)

Do you not realise that the moon is pockmarked by craters into a terrain that needs a very special type of lander - eg the Lunar Module that was developed for the Apollo program.

It took 8 years and a billion dollars just to develop the lunar module for the purpose of landing on the moon.

Read and learn. This is the space age and you know nothing about it. That is a shame.

But worse still, you are not alone.

Answer 4

That wasn't their mission objective. The thought was, make a fleet of re-usable vehicles, lowering the cost-per-pound of getting materials into orbit, then build what you need there.

Unfortunately, the shuttle was much more complex & expensive than first thought, and with reduced space budgets, NASA couldn't really make use of them.

Answer 5

They did, they just have kept it secret. We all know its been supposebly decades since the last (known) lunar landing however some people beleive otherwise. For instance why would you keep it secret. (have you ever watched the lunar landing its fake, there are no stars, there are tracks, and one of the rocks says something like (seed1) which is because the real landing was kept secret because they found something amazing and bizarre.) Have you ever seen the videos from the moon that the lunar lander took, There are strange flashes, snake-like creatures flying around, odd atmosphere, strange objects, etc. Its kept secret so that the public would know nothing about this but people with common knowledge know that there is something strange about the moon

Answer 6

The space shuttle was built for low-earth orbit. It's job was to deliver payload, fix satellites, retrieve satellites, and now help complete the ISS.

Answer 7

There was no interest in doing so.

There was no need to do so.

There was no money to do so.

If you want to go to the Moon, you design a vehicle to do that. Making a vehicle that can go to the Moon but spends most of its time in Earth orbit really is a waste of time and resources.

Answer 8

One word: money.