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I'm not gonna lie, I'm closer to a conspiracy theorist and non-believer than I am to trust history on the moon landing stuff. Doesn't help that I wasn't alive w

I'm not gonna lie, I'm closer to a conspiracy theorist and non-believer than I am to trust history on the moon landing stuff. Doesn't help that I wasn't alive when it happened, and that we haven't since gone again. It feels so nonsensical to me, I would love for someone to help me educate myself on it from a more grounded point of view that can satisfy my paranoia. Did we really go there? How come we (as in humanity, any other nation whatsoever) haven't gone again since?

scrumper 1mo ago
Yes we really went there, quite a few times in the 1970s. We have been again, also several times, with rovers and landers. As for why not humans since then? There's bugger all there to justify the extreme cost (at this time). It's an unpleasant ball made from tiny abrasive dust particles that is more easily explored with robots. The prestige thing is done; until we set up some base there in support of some broader mission (scientific or exploratory) there isn't a reason to send people. I've put a couple of resources here for you. The first one described the program from a neutral perspective (in line with what you ask - grounded POV to satisfy paranoia): https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/moon-landing/ https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/moon-landing/ This one is for people a little further down the conspiracy pipeline, and it debunks the various things that moon landing conspiracists like to talk about: https://www.iop.org/explore-physics/moon/how-do-we-know-we-went-to-the-moon https://www.iop.org/explore-physics/moon/how-do-we-know-we-w... Both are worth a read! Finally this is an excellent jumping-off point to understand the Apollo program in more detail, once you're satisfied that it did happen (if you don't think so, you'll reject the source out of hand.) https://www.nasa.gov/the-apollo-program/ https://www.nasa.gov/the-apollo-program/ The program itself was really, really, really cool and is worth reading about. A truly enormous achievement involving millions of people and an entire country's scientific and engineering capacity.
- hmokiguess 1mo ago
  Thank you so much for this, I am super excited for this read, you made my day!
  - scrumper 1mo ago
    You are most welcome. Enjoy it!
- mesrik 1mo ago
  Also to get the mood and sense how it felt following those flights media outlets back then there is great site https://apolloinrealtime.org/ https://apolloinrealtime.org/ I've listened through those flights few times and it still each time takes me back to memories still giving me goosebumps. Especially Apollo 11 when I was nine year old kid listening tiny battery radio all nights at our summer cottage attic.
  - hmokiguess 1mo ago
    That's so cool. I feel like society did a bad job passing on the torch of that throughout history to the newer generation, especially outside the US (I'm not an American), so a lot of us are really disconnected with what went down outside of the US.
  - scrumper 1mo ago
    I don’t usually get parenting right but the stars lined up for this one: I got hold of the Lego Saturn V kit (1969 pieces!) and my two kids and I built it over a few days while listening to this in the background. Last piece on right about the time “the Eagle has landed.” It is a fantastic site.
pfdietz 1mo ago
The "moon landings didn't happen" conspiracies are, of course, inane, but they come from an understandable place. If moon landings really did happen, how could they just have stopped? There's a disconnect between the event and the consequences. The resolution is to realize that Apollo was a dead-end stunt, not some universe-altering historical event. The lack of consequences was an inevitable result of the structure of what Apollo was.
- m4rtink 1mo ago
  Yeah, if you read a bit into the the pre-lunar-Apollo era, the plans were sensible - LEO space stations, space shipyards and orbital assembly, lunar space stations, eventually a landing and a surface stations & resource usage. All gradual sustainable infrastructure building. Then all that went out the airlock & the whole thing devolved into a long-term unsustainable race. :P
  - pfdietz 1mo ago
    Those plans were only sensible if launch costs could be greatly reduced. It ended up that the government-contractor axis wasn't able to reduce launch costs, not due to technical reason, but political and institutional ones. There had to be a different approach, as pursued by SpaceX.
    - m4rtink 1mo ago
      Yeah, but I think it is all related - there were various programs to reuse the Saturn and other rockets, there are pictures of them dunking engines in the sea & studying what it does to them or even the rather insane concept for a giant helicopter for catching the first stage of Saturn V. Reading the early space program history it really looks like the consensus was "of course we will reuse those rockets, it would be insane to not do so". But then as time pressure set in & money was suddenly not a problem, all that went to the wayside. And by the time Apollo was over, it seems the mindset that rockets are expensive and expandable set in. If it was just inertia or also business interests of the by then entrenched launcher contractors is hard to tell.
wat10000 1mo ago
Yes, we really went there. There's zero legitimate doubt. If nothing else, consider: the Soviets were locked in a massive propaganda war with the US over the respective countries' space achievements, with the Soviets spending vast resources to show that their ideology was superior by showing what they could achieve in space. They had no trouble tracking American activity in space. If the moon landings had been fake, wouldn't the Soviets have brought their receipts and utterly humiliated their rivals? We haven't gone again since because there's not much point to it. The US spent an amount of money equivalent to about 10 Manhattan Projects to ultimately put a dozen people on the moon for a cumulative total of somewhat less than one person-month. There was no military utility to it, no commercial benefit, just some science and exploration. Once you've done that a few times, what's the impetus to continue? The technology was so bleeding-edge that each mission required a huge amount of bespoke manufacturing that got thrown away after a single use, and massive teams of people to run everything, such that each individual mission still cost billions of inflation-adjusted dollars. The American public's stomach for spending such vast sums of money just didn't last. Imagine if you needed to build and throw away an entire Airbus A380 to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Maybe it would have been summited a few times to show it could be done, but we probably wouldn't keep doing it.
m4rtink 1mo ago
Because instead of a gradual progression and space infrastructure building (as was the original plan before Kennedy set the goal to Lunar landing before 1960s are over, its well documented in NASA history pages). As a result a space race with the Soviets developed, resulting in the USA winning & Soviets loosing - at a price. The Apollo hardware was a racing hardware, like a race car, build to win a race and little more. As a result, the whole program was horrendously expensive to run & it was politically unworkable to continue running it once a victory in the space race has been achieved. There was no shortage of people calling to continue not just with Moon but space exploration & industrialization in general (with a good example being Gerard O'Neill - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O%27Neill#Space_colonization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O%27Neill#Space_colo...). But they could never get the beancounters & shortsighted politicians to allocate the necessary costs to get things going. What I think changed is both the technology finally getting cheap enough that more entities can finally get involved without begging a government for a massive budget, because launcher reuse was demonstrated and even just because a bunch of very rich people who like space got involved & can do it themselves without depending on others.

scrumper 1mo ago

Yes we really went there, quite a few times in the 1970s. We have been again, also several times, with rovers and landers. As for why not humans since then? There's bugger all there to justify the extreme cost (at this time). It's an unpleasant ball made from tiny abrasive dust particles that is more easily explored with robots. The prestige thing is done; until we set up some base there in support of some broader mission (scientific or exploratory) there isn't a reason to send people. I've put a couple of resources here for you. The first one described the program from a neutral perspective (in line with what you ask - grounded POV to satisfy paranoia): https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/moon-landing/ https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/moon-landing/ This one is for people a little further down the conspiracy pipeline, and it debunks the various things that moon landing conspiracists like to talk about: https://www.iop.org/explore-physics/moon/how-do-we-know-we-went-to-the-moon https://www.iop.org/explore-physics/moon/how-do-we-know-we-w... Both are worth a read! Finally this is an excellent jumping-off point to understand the Apollo program in more detail, once you're satisfied that it did happen (if you don't think so, you'll reject the source out of hand.) https://www.nasa.gov/the-apollo-program/ https://www.nasa.gov/the-apollo-program/ The program itself was really, really, really cool and is worth reading about. A truly enormous achievement involving millions of people and an entire country's scientific and engineering capacity.

hmokiguess 1mo ago
Thank you so much for this, I am super excited for this read, you made my day!
- scrumper 1mo ago
  You are most welcome. Enjoy it!
mesrik 1mo ago
Also to get the mood and sense how it felt following those flights media outlets back then there is great site https://apolloinrealtime.org/ https://apolloinrealtime.org/ I've listened through those flights few times and it still each time takes me back to memories still giving me goosebumps. Especially Apollo 11 when I was nine year old kid listening tiny battery radio all nights at our summer cottage attic.
- hmokiguess 1mo ago
  That's so cool. I feel like society did a bad job passing on the torch of that throughout history to the newer generation, especially outside the US (I'm not an American), so a lot of us are really disconnected with what went down outside of the US.
- scrumper 1mo ago
  I don’t usually get parenting right but the stars lined up for this one: I got hold of the Lego Saturn V kit (1969 pieces!) and my two kids and I built it over a few days while listening to this in the background. Last piece on right about the time “the Eagle has landed.” It is a fantastic site.

pfdietz 1mo ago

The "moon landings didn't happen" conspiracies are, of course, inane, but they come from an understandable place. If moon landings really did happen, how could they just have stopped? There's a disconnect between the event and the consequences. The resolution is to realize that Apollo was a dead-end stunt, not some universe-altering historical event. The lack of consequences was an inevitable result of the structure of what Apollo was.

m4rtink 1mo ago
Yeah, if you read a bit into the the pre-lunar-Apollo era, the plans were sensible - LEO space stations, space shipyards and orbital assembly, lunar space stations, eventually a landing and a surface stations & resource usage. All gradual sustainable infrastructure building. Then all that went out the airlock & the whole thing devolved into a long-term unsustainable race. :P
- pfdietz 1mo ago
  Those plans were only sensible if launch costs could be greatly reduced. It ended up that the government-contractor axis wasn't able to reduce launch costs, not due to technical reason, but political and institutional ones. There had to be a different approach, as pursued by SpaceX.
  - m4rtink 1mo ago
    Yeah, but I think it is all related - there were various programs to reuse the Saturn and other rockets, there are pictures of them dunking engines in the sea & studying what it does to them or even the rather insane concept for a giant helicopter for catching the first stage of Saturn V. Reading the early space program history it really looks like the consensus was "of course we will reuse those rockets, it would be insane to not do so". But then as time pressure set in & money was suddenly not a problem, all that went to the wayside. And by the time Apollo was over, it seems the mindset that rockets are expensive and expandable set in. If it was just inertia or also business interests of the by then entrenched launcher contractors is hard to tell.

wat10000 1mo ago

Yes, we really went there. There's zero legitimate doubt. If nothing else, consider: the Soviets were locked in a massive propaganda war with the US over the respective countries' space achievements, with the Soviets spending vast resources to show that their ideology was superior by showing what they could achieve in space. They had no trouble tracking American activity in space. If the moon landings had been fake, wouldn't the Soviets have brought their receipts and utterly humiliated their rivals? We haven't gone again since because there's not much point to it. The US spent an amount of money equivalent to about 10 Manhattan Projects to ultimately put a dozen people on the moon for a cumulative total of somewhat less than one person-month. There was no military utility to it, no commercial benefit, just some science and exploration. Once you've done that a few times, what's the impetus to continue? The technology was so bleeding-edge that each mission required a huge amount of bespoke manufacturing that got thrown away after a single use, and massive teams of people to run everything, such that each individual mission still cost billions of inflation-adjusted dollars. The American public's stomach for spending such vast sums of money just didn't last. Imagine if you needed to build and throw away an entire Airbus A380 to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Maybe it would have been summited a few times to show it could be done, but we probably wouldn't keep doing it.

m4rtink 1mo ago

Because instead of a gradual progression and space infrastructure building (as was the original plan before Kennedy set the goal to Lunar landing before 1960s are over, its well documented in NASA history pages). As a result a space race with the Soviets developed, resulting in the USA winning & Soviets loosing - at a price. The Apollo hardware was a racing hardware, like a race car, build to win a race and little more. As a result, the whole program was horrendously expensive to run & it was politically unworkable to continue running it once a victory in the space race has been achieved. There was no shortage of people calling to continue not just with Moon but space exploration & industrialization in general (with a good example being Gerard O'Neill - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O%27Neill#Space_colonization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O%27Neill#Space_colo...). But they could never get the beancounters & shortsighted politicians to allocate the necessary costs to get things going. What I think changed is both the technology finally getting cheap enough that more entities can finally get involved without begging a government for a massive budget, because launcher reuse was demonstrated and even just because a bunch of very rich people who like space got involved & can do it themselves without depending on others.