If they had kept going after reaching the moon, i feel like by now, we would’ve developed the technology to establish a colony on the moon. So why stop?
In: Planetary Science
A few things I’ve learned over the years, none of it good.
1. Americans, and especially the politicians were bored with it. There was a “We got to the moon so let’s get back to work on things in our own backyard” attitude.
2. Social “activists” were always pointing out that America was wasting (their word, not mine) tons of money that could be used to solve our social problems. Big assumption there, that more money solves social problems.
3. NASA was riding high after Apollo 11, and proposed a budget to Congress that included a totally reusable two stage space shuttle, a space station, a long term moon base, and a manned Mars landing by I think 1984 or 1986. Congress said No to everything. And that is how we got Skylab (made from the 3rd stage of a Saturn V rocket with things tacked onto it) and space shuttle with an external fuel tank and two solid fueled rocket boosters instead of a fully reusable two stage shuttle. Yes, the STS as we knew it was a bad, compromised design.
4. Something else that really sticks in my craw about the STS. NASA knew that a fully reusable, two stage, liquid fueled shuttle was the way to go, safer and cheaper to operate. But if the first stage was lost, it would cost a fortune. Never mind we weren’t supposed to lose a first stage that could take off and land under its own power, someone figured it out that way. So while the two solid fueled rocket boosters (the ones that failed and destroyed Challenger) were more expensive to operate, they were cheaper if we lost one. So lower initial cost but higher operational costs. Congress members saw this and decided on lower initial cost. Bad, bad decision.
5. STS high operation cost. Besides what I just laid out in point 4, the STS was expensive to operate otherwise. It was “sold” to Congress and the American people as something with a quick turn around. Take off, do the job, land, quick refurbishment and off she would go again. It wasn’t even close. The tiles had to be meticulously inspected and sometimes reglued. The three main engines always had to be broken down and parts replaced, because NASA continuously ran them at higher output than they were built for, 104 percent being common. And the reaction control rockets, the hydrogen peroxide thrusters could not have their tanks refilled, as the chemical was considered toxic. So they had to roll the shuttle into an enclosed hanger to refill. The real killer is that an ordinary, disposable rocket like the Titan / Atlas was cheaper to operate for simple payload launches. But NASA couldn’t allow that, because it would make their prized possession look like a waste.
6. One time there was a congressional hearing, with the director of NASA trying to explain the high costs and the broken promise of a space shuttle being inexpensive to operate. The NASA director smiles sheepishly and says “Well senator, something happened on the way to the bank.”
All these things combined to make America step back from what we (baby boomers) thought would happen. I was supposed to be able to take a vacation on a space station by now. Hey, in the 80s I actually thought we were on our way to what we saw in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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