Why is it difficult even today to land on the Moon when the US did it almost 50 years ago with 50 year old technology?
In: Engineering
Landing on the moon 50 years required lots of specialized technology. Tens of thousands of people worked on the Apollo missions. Much of what was used was custom built, using the aerospace, electrical, and mechanical technology of the day.
For example, the industry base in the 1960s could create things such as precision mechanical devices, and customized analog electronics. That industry base no longer exists. But, there is a different industry base that can create awesome computer systems and better materials. So, it is still possible to build a moon mission, but doing so now requires customizing different technology. It is still difficult.
In addition to what everyone is saying about motivation, money and so on, there is some good amount of technology we’d have to re-familiarise ourselves with in order to go back to the Moon.
Like, say, landing on the Moon. If you want to train people on sometihng more than a simulator, you need to build the training lander. But the Moon’s gravity is 10% of Earth’s, so you need to adjust that. You can’t just make the lander 10x stronger since your angle of descent would be all wrong (much steeper due to the gravity). So you need to make a rig that does a 90% downward thrust at all times and then have a lander that can operate in that 10% gravity condition.
It’s been done before, but with it beign mothballed for 50 years (nobody needed to train on it for that long!), barely anyone would remember the engineering to make that work, so you’re almost starting from scratch.
Now repeat that for everything else you’d need, bigger engines to move the lander to the Moon, suits usable on the Moon, the lander itself, etc.
Back then it was top national priority, with some 4% of all federal spending dedicated to NASA. Today it is merely a nice to have project, with comparatively small amount of money available for it.
Just want to drop a good YouTube video here for you OP.
This guy talks about how what NASA is doing to get to the moon is a little silly.
Recent video by curious Droid on YouTube explains this pretty well.
A car from 1960 looks the same and does the same as a car from 2024. However, the car from 2024 is completely different in every regard down to the engine, except that it has 4 wheels. A mechanic can’t simply switch between the two when only knowing one.
We easily could of we were willing to spend the same kind of $$.
It’s still real a ton of energy and a phenomenally hard engineering project all which makes it crazy expensive still. Hard to overstate this. Back then the US was desperate to prove our tech was better so Russia didn’t risk nuclear war. The NASA budget was 7-8% of the US budget almost all focused on Apollo vs <1% now and more focused on telescopes & the ISS which are cheaper and have clearer science goals.
We’ve only launched ~100 vehicles to orbit a year (until Falcon 9 dropped the cost significantly) and only a handful to the moon in total. Compare that to hundreds of millions of cars a year and you can see why rockets haven’t improved as much. So why spend all that $$ just to grab a few more rocks? NASA is only returning with bigger goals of a base and gateway to Mars and beyond, making it even harder and more expensive. Even now, it’s not that obvious it’s worth it.
This and a bunch of smaller reasons: Low risk tolerance, no post-war manufacturing economy, less commitment to science, the list goes on.
Using different method of getting there for one. The 50 year old version was more a direct flight. The new Artemis version is using a different approach that’s going to take many more days (10 I think vs 3 days). The rockets are different, the ships the crew will be in are different and untested(well some parts are tested now). We have a much lower tolerance for failures. We aren’t racing the Russians this time trying to perfect our ICBM tech in the guise of landing a man on the moon. This time we’re actually trying to set up shop on the moon. That last bit means things need to be way more robust and idiot proof. This isn’t just some task of sticking a monkey in a tin can and aiming it at a rock. This is way more advanced.
There is an answer that is also valid that hasn’t been said yet.
All those skills and workers who were part of the original programs are no longer available. The tools and factories that made those parts are also not available.
Even if we have more technology now, it’s better to start from scratch then try to replicate an older rocket.
We have so many planes and tanks in the military that work very well. F-15s, c-130s. But we don’t make/buy those models anymore. Just spare parts.
The capacity to make them is lost to time and would take considerable amount of money to redo.
Those projects in the government took 5+ years with funding approved for those programs to finish.
In today’s climate, we can barely get a budget approved by congress.
At least part of it is safety. The standards are far higher today then back then. Those guys really looked death in the face.
Money, brain
Tech needs to be maintained
You need the money, I’ve read NASA had huge cuts in budgets, what will you do when it’s just better to go do a web app for more money..
And finally I’ve read we can’t reproduce some tech anymore (materials, knowledge etc) and I forgot the exact argument and logic..
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