Liquidwombat t1_j1wau1p wrote on December 27, 2022 at 9:48 PM

I’m not smart enough to know the answers. Why we’re still not doing it. But the root cause is Kennedy and his stupid to the moon and back speech. Up until that point this was absolutely NASA‘s plan but Kennedy’s stupid speech meant that there was no way they would have enough time to implement that plan so they just went balls to the wall with a program to get onto the moon and absolutely no continuing benefit after that. If they are stuck to the original plan which is what you’re proposing, they probably wouldn’t have gotten to the moon until the mid to late 70s but we would almost certainly be on Mars right now.

ADSWNJ t1_j1wsjpn wrote on December 27, 2022 at 11:53 PM

I guess (seeing your Ukraine flag!) you can blame the Russians for that 1960's Space Race. Couching that goal to get to the Moon (and safely back again) made space a national priority the likes of which it would not have seen on a pure-science budget. Arguably the Apollo-Soyuz era, leading to the ISS era was critical in the detante between the US and the USSR back then.