Once again, the physics behind space travel was already well known and it was mostly the technicalities that needed addressing. Compared to human metabolism, na

Once again, the physics behind space travel was already well known and it was mostly the technicalities that needed addressing. Compared to human metabolism, navigation in space is rather straightforward math. A lot of the necessary stuff was already discovered by Newton's time, in the 17th century. We know a lot less about our own bodies than about celestial bodies, simply because relevant observation is nowhere near as easy. Observing and measuring activity of cells in vivo, within living human beings themselves, is a fundamentally hard problem. We can do a lot of stuff in mice, but mice are rather different from us and results in mice usually don't translate to workable therapies for people. Our problems with cancer, Alzheimer's etc. are problems of understanding, not technicalities. Imagine trying to fly to the Moon without knowledge of Kepler's gravity laws. No amount of money can compensate for such massive ignorance.