SAFCOldie
Striker
Thats not really true though is it?
Missions to the moon were very expensive and NASA was in danger of running way over their budgets. Interest from the public had wained - it was nothing new. Congress was reluctant to give such huge funds for them to keep doing the same thing. NASA themselves wanted to do longer missions and do more on the moon, which the Apollo mission LEM was not really suitable for. The technology they had invented had performed brilliantly but they had pushed it to its limits.
By the time further funds were available, newer safety rules and operating procedures made the Apollo hardware completely unsuitable. They still had much of it in museums, though some plans have been lost in the Atlanta federal archives. They still had the engineers and could have rebuilt the missing bits.
Focus then turned to a less expensive reusable craft that could also have commercial uses, such as putting satellites into orbit, orbiting stations and launch things like a big space telescope that they were starting to talk about.
Finally NASA have not said anything about not going back or that they can’t go back. Their current Artemis program aims to put the first woman on the moon by 2024. With a few other nations looking and Musk making serious noises (though not really producing any firm plans at the moment), there is a very good chance we will see a lunar return in the next decade. Shackleton crater in the south is a obvious target, but nostalgia and a legit investigation to see how the hardware has coped is likely to see us return to one of the Apollo landing sites. 17’s buggy would be my guess of what they want to look at. That will rather deflate the deniers though - or they will claim a multi-national fake to cover up the 60s and 70s fake. I.e. dig dig dig now they are firmly in the hole.
So whilst all other technology has advanced expediently over the last 60 YEARS, at this point they reckon they've destroyed all the old technology and can't go back at this time, utter turd, absolute shite, nope there is more to this bollocks than they are telling us, how this Nasa fella keeps a straight face is beyond me.
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