The Apollo program cost, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program , $25 billion in 1973 dollars, o

The Apollo program cost, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program , $25 billion in 1973 dollars, over 11 years. According to https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm that's about $146 billion in 2018 dollars. That's an annual cost averaging more than the entire program cost of the JWST. Of course Apollo spending wasn't very even over those 11 years; for example in 196 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Costs it cost about $23 billion in 2018 dollars. So triple the entire JWST program cost in that one year. If we were willing to throw this much money at the problem, sure NASA could build multiple iterations of things quickly, destructively test them to get lots of data, etc, etc.