2 ms·
No, we don't have capacity to go to the Moon. How'd you define the capacity? There is no production of heavy launchers of Saturn-V class, and existing (somewha
by avmich 6y ago
No, we don't have capacity to go to the Moon.
How'd you define the capacity? There is no production of heavy launchers of Saturn-V class, and existing (somewhat, just a couple of launches) Falcon Heavy is not enough, at least not without, say, multiple launches. There is no production of a spacecraft capable of landing to the Moon with humans and safely getting them back, at least to the orbit around the Moon. It's questionable if Crew Dragon can fly to Moon orbit and back to Earth. On the other hand, all of that could be developed - but so everything could be developed starting, say, 1940 - yet we won't say we had the capacity to go to the Moon in 1940.
We can develop everything needed, to the quality surpassing 1960-s, way faster than in 1960, given enough funding. But - there are caveats: "can" doesn't mean "already did", "way faster" doesn't mean "arbitrarily fast, e.g. by December, 2020", and "given enough funding" is being looked at differently than when JFK made his announcement.
So... it's at least quite doubtful that a reasonable definition of "capacity" allows saying "we still do have the capacity to go to the Moon".