The landing of 12 people on the moon is still one of the most important, if not the greatest, achievements of the US space agency “NASA”. Astronauts collected rocks, took pictures, conducted experiments, planted flags, and then returned home. But that visit during the “Apollo” program did not establish a permanent human presence on the moon.
Fifty years after the last manned moon landing – Apollo 17 in December 1972 – there are plenty of reasons to put people back on the moon and stay there longer.
NASA has promised that we will soon see astronauts on the moon again – perhaps by 2025 at the earliest in a program called Artemis, in which she will be the first woman ever to touch the lunar surface.
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Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who ran the agency during Trump’s term, said it was science or technology hurdles that held the US back from doing so sooner.
“If it weren’t for the political risks, we’d be on the moon now. We might even be on Mars,” Bridenstine told reporters.
He added, “It was the political risks that prevented this from happening (…) The program took a long time and cost a lot of money.”
Former astronaut Chris Hadfield told Business Insider: “A permanent human research station on the Moon was the logical next step. It’s only three days away (…) We have a whole bunch of things to invent and then test in order to learn.” Before we can go deeper into this world.”
The lunar base could develop into a fuel depot for deep space missions, leading to unprecedented space telescopes, facilitating life on Mars, and solving ancient scientific mysteries about the Earth’s moon. It could even spur a thriving off-world economy, perhaps one built around lunar space tourism.
But many astronauts and other experts point out that the biggest barriers to making new manned lunar missions reality are somewhat cliché and frustrating. Is that getting to the moon is really expensive.
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NASA’s budget for 2022 is $24 billion, and $26 billion in the 2023 budget.
These amounts may seem large, but when you consider that the total is divided among all departments of the agency and the ambitious projects within it, it looks different. By contrast, the US military is on track to have a budget of about $858 billion in 2023.
Chiefs problem
Herein lies another major problem: the partisan political crisis; The process of designing, engineering, and testing a spacecraft to transport people to another world with ease lasts longer than any two-term US president. New presidents and legislators often de-prioritize space exploration from the previous leader’s plan.
In 2004, for example, the Bush administration tasked NASA with finding a way to replace the space shuttle, which was about to be retired, and also return to the moon. The agency came up with the Constellation program to land astronauts on the Moon using a rocket called Ares and a spacecraft called Orion. NASA spent $9 billion over five years designing, building, and testing hardware for the human spaceflight program.
However, after President Barack Obama took office—and the Government Accountability Office released a report about NASA’s inability to estimate the cost of Constellation—Obama pushed to cancel the program and signed on for the SLS rocket instead.
Trump did not get rid of SLS. But he changed Obama’s goal of launching astronauts to an asteroid, and shifted priorities to missions to the moon and Mars. Trump wanted to see Artemis astronauts on the moon in 2024.
These frequent changes in NASA’s expensive priorities have led to cancellation after cancellation, a loss of about $20 billion, and years of lost time.
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Biden seems to be a rare exception to the wily presidential trend: He hasn’t fiddled with Trump’s Artemis priority for NASA, and he’s kept the Space Force intact.
The real driving force behind the government’s commitment to returning to the moon is the will of the American people, who vote for politicians and help shape their policy priorities. But public interest in lunar exploration has always been tepid.
Challenges outside politics
The political tug of war around NASA’s mission and budget isn’t the only reason people won’t return to the moon. The Moon is also a 4.5 billion year old death trap for humans that should not be trifled with or underestimated.
Its surface is strewn with potholes and boulders that threaten a safe landing. Leading up to the first moon landing in 1969, the US government spent what would be billions of dollars today to develop, launch and deliver satellites to the moon to map its surface and help mission planners explore potential Apollo landing sites.
But the biggest concern is what eons of meteorite impacts have created: regolith, also called moon dust.
Madhu Thangavelu, an aeronautical engineer at the University of Southern California, wrote in 2014 that “the moon is covered with a fine, talc-like top layer of lunar dust, several inches deep in some areas, which is electrostatically charged as a result of its interaction with the solar wind and is a very abrasive, clingy, polluting substance.” Space suits, vehicles and systems very quickly.”
There is also the problem of sunlight. For about 14 days, the surface of the Moon is a boiling inferno and is directly exposed to the harsh rays of the sun because the Moon has no protective atmosphere. After that, the remaining 14 days will be in complete darkness, making the lunar surface one of the coldest places in the universe.
Thangavelu wrote: “There is no more environmentally inhospitable or harsher place to live than the Moon (…) However, given its close proximity to Earth, there is no better place to learn how to live than on Earth.”
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Another problem, the astronauts say, is NASA’s gray workforce. These days, we’re seeing more American kids surveyed dream of becoming YouTube stars, than astronauts.
Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmidt recently told Business Insider: “You have to realize that young people are a key component of this kind of effort (…) The average age of the people at Mission Control for Apollo 13 was 26, and they’d already been involved in a bunch of mission.”
“That’s not where the innovation and excitement comes from,” Schweickart said. “The excitement comes when you have teens and 20-year-olds running the programs, noting that the average age at NASA’s Johnson Space Center is close to 60.”
Many astronauts’ desire to return to the moon aligns with billionaire Jeff Bezos’ long-term vision. Bezos floated a plan to start building the first lunar base using Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket system.
He said earlier: “We will move all heavy industries from the land, and the land will be reserved for residential and light industries.”
Musk also spoke at length about how SpaceX’s Starship Launch System could pave the way for regular, affordable moon visits. SpaceX may visit the moon before NASA or Blue Origin.
Astronauts don’t doubt whether we’ll go back to the Moon or go up to Mars because they say it’s just a matter of time.