Why is there suddenly a great interest in a new moon landing after more than 50 years?
In: Planetary Science
The initial moon landing was a major unifying moment for the west. It was a clear victory over the Russian space program. A lot of Americans have nostalgia for that moment, being the country to do something no one else has done, before anyone else on a new frontier.
The moon landing is sort of the downgraded mission. George W Bush started this process with the goal of getting a man on the moon by 2020 only to be used as a launching point for missions to Mars. But now it appears to be 2027 with no launching point being setup any time soon.
So NASA is trying really hard to sell the merits of this $90B mission.
A lot of people hoped that this process would lead to the technological boom that the first moon landing lead to. A lot of technologies were developed during this time period. The problem now is that the private industry invests so much in R&D ($700B/year) that there’s no way that NASA’s $22B/year budget would ever be able to keep up. It’s now the other way that NASA relies on the private industry to invent the technologies it needs.
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