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Now, stuff like that spoon-feed with honey every conspiracy theorist that says/writes that we (humans) never actually went to the moon blah blah blah. My thoug

Now, stuff like that spoon-feed with honey every conspiracy theorist that says/writes that we (humans) never actually went to the moon blah blah blah. My thoughts about it is that.. 'hey we got tech to stream live the whole thing... from lift off to landing, with 10 cameras to each direction. I remember watching live the "Red Bull Stratos" and it was soooooooooo cool!!!!!! Why not to the moon??? How come we went to the moon 40-50 years ago, and then silence for decades? If anything technology is better/faster/safer. We should be going to the moon every year just to validate the parking ticket. And now you see we went from "flew there, landed, played golf, came back" to "oops we can't remote control land an box".

echoangle 2y ago
Did you look at the development cost of the apollo program vs intuitive machines budget? And the number of participating people? The IM-1 mission was about 100 million dollars, a single Saturn V launch was more than a billion. Total Apollo budget for Apollo (6 crewed landings and a few manned missions for testing, and some uncrewed test flights) was 260 billion in todays money.
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  "The Saturn V program cost was $41.3 billion in present day dollars and its cost per launch was $3.2 billion also in present day dollars." Thus, the IM-1 was cheap.
Laremere 2y ago
The Apollo program had a wartime budget and a wartime risk tolerance. The US and Russia were at war, though they did not directly engage with each other due to the threat of mutual nuclear destruction. Along with various proxy wars, technological dominance in space was a key factor in this war. If one side gained enough advantage, they could potentially leverage it into using it to win a direct war. Another factor is that Kennedy's assassination protected the program from political pressure within the US. Since then, other factors have turned the attention of the space program: The USSR fell apart and didn't pose much of a threat, reducing the budget to a fraction of the size. The Space Shuttle was designed to be the next big thing in space, as a reusable launch vehicle; it could only do low earth orbit and fell short of its goals. Focus shifted to science, and a lot of good science could be performed in low earth orbit; This has lead to, for example, the significant achievement of a continuous human presence in space since the year 2000. Finally, the accepted risk for Apollo was several times what is acceptable today. Even if we had all of the old hardware on the launchpad ready to go for another mission, NASA would never put an astronaut on it.

echoangle 2y ago

Did you look at the development cost of the apollo program vs intuitive machines budget? And the number of participating people? The IM-1 mission was about 100 million dollars, a single Saturn V launch was more than a billion. Total Apollo budget for Apollo (6 crewed landings and a few manned missions for testing, and some uncrewed test flights) was 260 billion in todays money.

ForOldHack 2y ago
"The Saturn V program cost was $41.3 billion in present day dollars and its cost per launch was $3.2 billion also in present day dollars." Thus, the IM-1 was cheap.

Laremere 2y ago

The Apollo program had a wartime budget and a wartime risk tolerance. The US and Russia were at war, though they did not directly engage with each other due to the threat of mutual nuclear destruction. Along with various proxy wars, technological dominance in space was a key factor in this war. If one side gained enough advantage, they could potentially leverage it into using it to win a direct war. Another factor is that Kennedy's assassination protected the program from political pressure within the US. Since then, other factors have turned the attention of the space program: The USSR fell apart and didn't pose much of a threat, reducing the budget to a fraction of the size. The Space Shuttle was designed to be the next big thing in space, as a reusable launch vehicle; it could only do low earth orbit and fell short of its goals. Focus shifted to science, and a lot of good science could be performed in low earth orbit; This has lead to, for example, the significant achievement of a continuous human presence in space since the year 2000. Finally, the accepted risk for Apollo was several times what is acceptable today. Even if we had all of the old hardware on the launchpad ready to go for another mission, NASA would never put an astronaut on it.