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
Moon rockets were the same rockets as ICBM. Once they got those, it was expensive to develop much further for no clear gain. If the other guy started doing it developing your own base to observe them might be nice but otherwise it was just firing money into space.
To give an answer from the Soviet side. They didnt stop but also didnt care so much about the space race
The USSR never really was all that involved in the “Space Race” to the moon. Infact when Korolov, the head of the Soviet space program, heard Kennedy say that America was aiming to land on the moon he went to the head of the USSR, Khrushchev to ask for permission to race them there.
Khrushchev however refused on the grounds that it is better to eliminate homelessness in the USSR than it is to land on the moon.
It was only 2 years after Kennedy made his speech, with Khrushchev being replaced by Brezhnev, did the moon landing idea get approved.
But it was never the ultimate goal as with the American space program.
The Soviet space program had multiple goals of which landing on the moon was only one of them.
Two of the other main goals were robotic exploration of other planets and permenant human habitation in space stations.
So whilst in America they worked hard up until the moon landings and then the whole idea of space exploration dropped off, in the USSR the moon landing goal was given up since it had already been done and instead the focus was given to the other goals.
Those goals resulted in things like Salyut-1, the first Soviet Space station, starting in 1971 and running until the end of the USSR and the creation of the ISS, using primarily Soviet development of habited space stations.
Aswell as the Venera missions to land on Venus from around 1961 to 1984 and the Lunokhod missions between 1966 and 1977 to land robotic rovers on the moon which the Soviets hoped to combine to put rovers on all other planets that they could and use these rovers to create bases for human habitation. The design also helped to clear debris from Chernobyl interestingly.
Another goal they focused on was better rockets. Such as the Energia rocket. Which was designed to eventually be fully reusable rocket way before Space-x even existed
So in summary. The USSR didnt care about the space race as much as America did. For them it was just one of many goals they had. So when the Americans landed on the moon they just continued on with their other goals instead and made a lot of development in these areas. For America they gave up caring so much after the space race but in the USSR this idea of space exploration stayed strong right up until the collapse.
The source for this if you want something to read is “Rockets and People” It is a book based on the memoirs of a Soviet rocket scientist that was then translated to English by NASA and shows the inner workings of the Soviet space program.
Just gonna take this opportunity to give a shout out to For All Mankind on Apple. Alternate history show where the Soviets beat the US to the moon and the space race never stopped.
Because America won the space race. Even if it was best of 3, we went there *6 times in 3 short years*.
Also you could say the cost was *astronomical*
Jokes aside going to the moon was kind of Kennedy’s thing. When Nixon was elected he cut NASAs budget by 10% in 1971, he also tried to cancel further Apollo missions after Apollo 13 fearing another disaster could hurt his reelection.
This is speculation but I imagine the domestic climate at the time may have prevented some of the aspirational enthusiasm required to further the space race.
America also entered a recession in 1973, oil crisis, Vietnam protests peaked from 1970-73, and let’s not forget watergate, there was a lot of domestic anxiety at the time and new distrust in government. That had never really happened before.
It took an ungodly amount of money and the only reason it could be justified was because there was public support for it but that just isn’t the case any more. It would have been nice though because there would have absolutely been more major scientific and engineering advancements and we all benefit from that whether we realise it or not.
As it turns out the Russians are white too and the leaders don’t really care about communism.
Going to the moon was a form of a power signaling to the rest of world, without having to blow the crap out of them with guns and bombs.
It’s because the US won. Had Russia beaten us to the moon we could be on mars now, mining asteroids or something
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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