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
As with much exploration, the initial space race was dangerous, expensive and rather jury-rigged. If not for ideological reasons, there would be little chance that such an effort would have been funded the way it was. Of course, the first big “takeaway” from the space race was ballistic missile technology – so it clearly never stopped but was somewhat focused on military purposes. Then of course, there was espionage and telecommunications (both with military applications).
No one actually stopped – it is just that the manned space exploration focused on earth and near-earth science rather than “Hail Mary” projects with lots of risks and not so much returns. As technology and computing improved, it just became far simpler, cheaper and more reliable to do most of the stuff using machines and sensors which is where we are today.
Deeper space exploration outside the protection of earth’s magnetic field is just very very dangerous for human bodies. The moon is just at the borderline of this protection. The technology available in the 70s and 80s did not allow for this. It would be deeply unpopular to send people to their deaths given the expected risks.
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