Can you explain why we haven't been back to the moon?

I would assume that because there isn’t enough immediate gain for governments to fund it.
The US made a mad dash to the moon because the Russians launched a satellite.

Maybe if China tries to go to the moon, the US will go back.

Isn’t there an unmanned mission happening right now?

Because we have “been there- done that” and it is hard to justify the $$$.

The easiest answer is that we haven’t needed to go there. It’s a hostile environment in which it would be costly to sustain life. There is other stuff that needs funding more.

We proved we could do it. Since there is no way to make it pay to go back again, we have moved on to other problems.

Besides, once we “beat” the Russians it was no longer politically important.

$$$$$

I can tell you why I haven’t been to the moon. I can barely stand to be cooped up for 5 hours on a cross country flight. When they develop warp drive that takes you there in seconds and there are some nice hotels and restaurants, I’ll get in line to see the earth from space. That would be cool!

And yet $2.3 trillion can go unaccounted for at the Pentagon? I know it’s a different agency, but does that really make sense? Using the costs in that article, that’s 65 times the amount of the original budget proposed by Bush.

@galileogirl, GFA!

I’m with Beldar and Primat, “Astronauts to the moon? Hahahahahahahaha…”

because there aren’t any little brown people there to exploit…or bomb (if they aren’t susceptible to exploitation)

Because there’s no oil there.

@AstroChuck Just wait until the power companies can monopolize solar power.

Yep, there’s no reason to. It’s hard to really get “pure science” research funded unless you think major discoveries will be made that can be capitalized on.

Yes, only if it can be capitalized on.. turned into property, and somehow exploited, will we ever allocate resources to return to the moon.

It’s like that commercial pointed out a few years back…we used to think the moon was made of cheese…we went there and it wasn’t. We haven’t been back. Behold the power of cheese.

@dalepetrie and what a disappointment that was.

Money and lack of public support.

Because its too windy up there?

@mammal You mean, the first time we went up to the moon we expected to find little brown people to exploit and plunder? Disappointed, we haven gone back?.... Your tired, repetitive, “exploited people” routine is getting old. Give it a break.

Yeah @mammal, where would you get this crazy notion of brown people being exploited and/or bombed? ;)

Hey, maybe we could take a break from killing brown people? You know, we should probably save some for our children and grandchildren to exploit.

Well, the parking is good but there’s no real nightlife.

Perhaps once this global warming thing gets into full swing the moon might start to look pretty damn good

The moon is hardly intriguing or exciting, whereas there are whole new worlds to be explored and perhaps colonized…...wtf

Lead on, wtf!

Or how about we concentrate on understanding our own planet, like wtf is going on at the bottom of the ocean we still cant get down there.

@Ansible1, that’s another disputable claim.

Ive noticed that @mammal gets on here, makes some asinine remark about the injustice of society and then when people call her on it she never responds. she clearly lacks the rhetoric to back up her logic…

There were difficult choices to be made how to spend the available space budget. After December 19, 1972 a lot of progress has been made understanding our solar system, our galaxy and the universe. Manned missions are only one way of gaining new knowledge. Probes can do a lot too. Just think of the discoveries made on Titan.

Humankind will go back. And eventually will go beyond the Moon. On to Mars and the Jovian moons and eventually beyond the solar systems. There are plenty of extrasolar planets to be explored. At some point in the future starships will become real.

I’ve always thought that the Moon would be a great place to gear up for colonizing Mars. Ship launches would be pretty cheap in 1/6G, though I suppose that it might cost more than the savings to get the supplies to Luna.

@madcapper No, see, you’ve got it backwards. Mammal picks up the rhetoric from whatever her propaganda sources are. Since these aren’t her own conclusions, she has no logic to back them up.

Because we have not now, and have never had, the technology to send men to the moon.

@Justanothersoul An awfully bold claim, especially the first part.
Especially in light of the current state of the art of technology, the soon-to-be-retired shuttle program, and most of all the Gemini program, which was created specifically for moonshot practice.

Nope, I’m with @Justanothersoul here, never been there yet, I love conspiracy theories me :-)

@bunnygrl, @Justanothersoul – this is my favorite ,which I came across a while after I asked this Q (I think.)

@kevbo LOL this is brilliant! thank you for sending the addy. I love the sheer detail in it, the fact that its pretty plausible helps too. I really enjoyed reading this actually, I can easily see, in my mind’s eye, Mulder printing it out and filing it away in a cabinet marked X Files lol :-)
hugs xx

@kevbo- That site had me in stitches. Have you read this from the same guy. F***ing hilarious!

You can’t have a space program when the country spends $2 billion a week for subjugating other countries. Now that the cold war is a draw and criminal organizations run Russia and the U.S., their attention is elsewhere.

I am sure that it there was a clear profit available the mafia in both countries would restart a real space program.