Astronauts explain why nobody's visited the moon in more than 45 years, and the answer's a little depressing

What he was able to do with the 1969 techniques, why doesn't it seem possible now?

Landing 12 people on the moon is one of NASA's greatest achievements, if not the greatest of all.

On their journey to the moon, astronauts gathered rocks, took pictures, conducted experiments, planted some flags, and then returned home. But this week-long stay during the Apollo flight was not made with the aim of a permanent human presence on the moon.

More than 45 years after the last moon landing — Apollo 17 in December 1972 — there are still many reasons to bring humans back to earth's large dusty moon and stay there.

Researchers and contractors believe that creating a base on the moon could serve as a fuel reservoir for deep-space flights, which could also contribute to the creation of renewable space telescopes and possibly facilitate life on Mars. Moreover, this rule will help solve ancient scientific mysteries around the Earth and make up the moon. A lunar base can become a thriving economy outside the world, and it may be possible to build a building for lunar space tourism.

"Establishing a permanent human research station on the moon is the next logical step," former astronaut Chris Hadfield told Business Insider recently. It's only three days away. We can afford the mistake, instead of killing everyone. We have a whole bunch of things that we have to invent and then test them to learn before we can go deeper."

Yet many astronauts and other experts point out that the major obstacles to manned moon missions over the last four decades are naïve, if not frustrating.

Getting to the moon is expensive, but it's not that much.
The critical and difficult obstacle to any space flight program, especially for missions involving people, is the high cost.

NASA has a budget of about $19.5 billion, according to a law signed by President Donald Trump on March 2017, which could rise to $19.9 billion in 2019.

Which one looks like a stroke of luck? - Consider that total material support is divided among all sections of the Agency and ambitious projects including James Webb Space Telescope, The Space Launch System, And Long-Distance Missions to the Sun, Jupiter, Mars, Belt Asteroids, the Kuiper Belt and the edge of the solar system. Or get the U.S. military a budget of about $600 billion a year. In particular, only one of these projects — for example, the modernization and expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal — could reach a budget of nearly $1.7 trillion over 30 years.

Moreover, NASA's current budget is rather small than its previous budget.

"The share of the U.S. Federal Budget by NASA peaked at 4% in 1965," said Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham during his time in Congress in 2015. Over the past 40 years, it has remained less than 1%, and over the past 15 years it has declined to only about 0.4% of the federal budget."

Trump's budget encourages a return to the moon and then an orbital visit to Mars. But given the increased costs of NASA's SLS rocket program, there may not be enough funding to reach any destination, even if isis funding skipped soon.

A 2005 NASA report estimated that returning to the moon would cost about $104 billion ($138 billion today, taking into account inflation over nearly 13 years) as the Apollo program cost about $120 billion in current dollars.

"Manned exploration is the most expensive space project, which will make it difficult to get political support for the project if it is not decided by the state represented in Congress, which in turn could allocate more funds to the project," Cunningham said. Until that happens, what is said is just words."

Referring to missions to go to Mars and return to the moon, Cunningham added, "NASA's budget is too low to do all the projects we're talking about here."

Crisis with presidents
The Trump administration's immediate goal is to send astronauts to the "moon's ocean" in 2023. That would be at the end of Trump's second term if he is re-elected.

Here lies another major problem: partisan political boldness.

"Why do you believe what any president says about what's going to happen after two administrations in the future?" says Hadfield. This is just talking."

From the astronauts' point of view, it's about the mission. The process of designing, engineering and testing a spacecraft that can carry human beings and bring them to another world requires more than two presidential terms easily. But we can predict this with a pattern of incoming presidents and legislators who have eliminated the space exploration priorities of previous leaders.

"I would like the next president to allocate a budget that will allow us to accomplish the mission that we are being asked to do, whatever that mission is," astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space, wrote in January 2016. (That was before Trump took office.)

But presidents and Congress seem to care about their continuity on this path.

For example, in 2004, the Bush administration tasked NASA with the task of finding a way to replace the space shuttle that was to be converted to scrap, as well as return to the moon. The agency then developed a constellation program that directs astronauts to the moon using a rocket called Ares and a spaceship called Orion.

NASA has spent $9 billion designing, building and testing devices for the Human Space Flight Program over five years. However, after President Barack Obama took office, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that NASA was unable to estimate the cost of the constellation program, forcing Obama to cancel the program and sign the Space Launch Rocket (SLS) system instead.

The Trump administration has not eliminated the SLS, but it has pursued a different target than the primary goal of launching astronauts to the moon and Mars.

These repeated changes have led to the cancellation after the other of NASA's costly priorities, the loss of nearly $20 billion, and many years of lost time and momentum.

"I'm disappointed that they're so slow and constantly changing their plans," Said Jim Lovell, an Apollo 8 astronaut, addressing Business Insider in 2017. I'm not excited about anything in the near future. We'll see what they do."

In a 2015 congressional testimony, Buzz Aldrin said he believed that the desire to return to the moon should come from the Capitol itself.

"U.S. leadership inspires the world by doing what no other country can do," Aldrin wrote in a prepared statement. We proved it briefly 45 years ago. I don't think we've repeated this since. I think the commitment must come from Congress and bilateral administration with a desire for leadership."

The real driving force behind the government's commitment to returning to the moon is the will of the American people, who in turn vote for politicians and help shape their policy priorities. But public interest in lunar exploration has always been lukewarm.

Even at the height of the Apollo program -- after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the moon -- only 53% of Americans thought the program was worth the cost. The U.S. vote on the Apollo entitlement is often less than 50%.

Today, 55% of Americans believe NASA should make returning to the moon a priority, although a quarter does not believe it should be a top priority, according to a Pew Research Center poll released in June. In contrast, 44% of respondents believe that astronauts should never be sent to the moon.

Support for mars crew exploration sciences is greater, with 63% of people believing it should be NASA's priority, and 91% of people think it's important to survey deadly asteroid objects.

Challenges outside politics
The political tension and attraction around NASA's mission and budget is not the only reason why people don't return to the moon. The moon is a 4.5 billion-year-old human death trap, and must not be deceived or underestimated.

The moon's surface is full of craters and rocks that threaten the safe landing of astronauts. In its first moon landing in 1969, the U.S. government spent an estimated billions of dollars at today's price to develop, launch, and deliver satellites to the moon, so they could study its surface map and thus help mission planners explore potential Apollo landing sites.

But the biggest concern lies in the effects of meteorites: rock debris or so-called lunar dust.

Madhu Thangavelu, an aeronautical engineer at the University of Southern California, noted in 2014 that the moon is covered with a "top layer of talc-shaped lunar dust**, several inches deep in some areas, and is also electrically charged because of its interaction with the solar wind, this layer is made up of material Slippery and sticky, spoil space suits, vehicles, and systems very quickly."

** Outdoors (or talc): is a metal consisting of hydrogenated magnesium silicate. It is widely used as a powder in its disjointed form. It's in fibrous blocks. The monocrystalline form of the shot is rare. It is used in many industries such as paper, plastics, paint, paint, rubber, food, electrical cables, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and ceramics.

Peggy Whitson, an astronaut who lived in space for 665 days, said the Apollo works "had a lot of problems with dust."

"If we're going to spend long periods building permanent homes, we need to understand how to deal with this dust," Whitson said.

Besides, there is a problem with sunlight. The moon's surface is a naked field that is directly exposed to harsh sunlight for 14.75 days at a time, and unlike Earth, the moon does not have a protective casing. Moreover, it will plunge into total darkness in the next 14.75 days, making its surface one of the coldest places in the universe.

A small nuclear reactor developed by NASA, called Kilopower, can provide astronauts with electricity during weeks-long lunar nights, and will be useful in other worlds as well, including Mars.

"There is no place or harsher environment to live than the moon, however, and being so close to Earth, there is no better place to learn how to live away from the planet," Thanjavelo wrote.

NASA has designed space suits resistant to dust and sun, but we are not sure if this equipment will be used soon, as some of them were part of the now-deriding constellation program.

A generation of billionaires may get there (space-rich)
A group of missiles capable of reaching the moon looms.

"There's this generation of billionaires," astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman told reporters at a roundtable earlier this year. The innovation that has been taking place over the past 10 years in space flight would not have happened if only NASA, Boeing, and Lockheed had adopted it. There was no incentive to cut costs or change the way we do it."

Hoffman refers to the work of Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, as well as Jeff Bezos, who runs a secret airline called Blue Origin.

"There's no doubt about that -- if we're going further, especially if we're going beyond the moon -- we need new transportation," Hoffman said. At the moment, we still live in the days of horsemen and horse-drawn carriages."

The desire of many astronauts to return to the moon fits with Bezos' long-range vision. Bezos put forward a plan to Washington that would begin building the first lunar base using the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket system in April.

Musk also talked a lot about how to make regular visits to the moon with the Big Falcon Rocket developed by SpaceX. SpaceX may even visit the moon before NASA or Blue Origin. The company's new Falcon Heavy rocket can launch a small Crew Dragon space capsule to the moon and return to Earth – and Musk said two citizens have already paid a large amount of money to go on the trip.

"My dream is that the moon will one day become part of the Earth's economic sphere — just like the geostationary orbit and low Earth orbit," Hoffman said. The outer space of geostationary orbit for the Earth is part of our daily economy. One day I think the moon will be, and that's something we're working for."

Astronauts have no doubt that we will return to the moon, then to Mars. It's a matter of time.

"I think in the end, humans will travel to the moon and then to Mars, maybe not in my life," Lovell said. But hopefully, they will be successful."

Resource:
https://www.sciencealert.com/astronauts-explain-why-nobody-s-visited-the-moon-in-more-than-45-years-and-the-answer-s-a-little-depressing