I'm going to sound like a conspiracy nut, but...



Baloo said:
Can’t build the Saturn Vs any more, NASA now has 17k staff instead of the 396k it had to run the Apollo programme, things need to be more cost effective, need to be innovative to be worthwhile (pointless spending 5% of your GDP to achieve nothing new)…
Click to expand...
Very sensible answer đź‘Ť
 
Didn’t nasa have unlimited funds in the 60s?

This latest attempt is a collaboration between private business and nasa with less funding

With private business it isn’t guaranteed to make it to space let alone the moon, eg Elon musks rockets regularly blow up

Yet when governments collaborate they achieve things like the space station
 
Baloo said:
Can’t build the Saturn Vs any more, NASA now has 17k staff instead of the 396k it had to run the Apollo programme, things need to be more cost effective, need to be innovative to be worthwhile (pointless spending 5% of your GDP to achieve nothing new)…
Click to expand...
How many of those 400k staff wouldn’t have a role today because of the advanced computer software? I can imagine the admin for instance would be a fraction of what was needed. They still put stuff up there so a small increase would be needed but it wouldn’t go anywhere near old numbers
 
citybythesea said:
Didn’t nasa have unlimited funds in the 60s?
Click to expand...
The space race was a big factor, beating the ussr isn’t the motivation it once was. It was all about being first and then there was the Kennedy guilt of wanting in done by the end of the decade (more a nice story over deciding factor though).
 
cornish mackem said:
How many of those 400k staff wouldn’t have a role today because of the advanced computer software? I can imagine the admin for instance would be a fraction of what was needed. They still put stuff up there so a small increase would be needed but it wouldn’t go anywhere near old numbers
Click to expand...
I’d imagine the issue is that the software doesn’t currently exist to do those roles, otherwise it would be doing it and they’d be back on the Moon.
 
if you look at how they built things in the 60’s (aircraft/spacecraft etc) it really is masterful. Almost all analogue, switches, valves, gaskets, breakers. Brilliant stuff. The knowledge required by both astronauts and Mission Control was astounding. Apollo 12 and John Aaron comes to mind.

But you wouldn’t just build a Concorde if you needed a supersonic airliner in 2024. Technology, and more importantly safety have moved on so much, they need to design and build a new on from scratch. With less money and very political or public appetite for it.

Artemis looks the step forward in exploration that the shuttle was supposed to be, but wasn’t in the end.
 

Back
Top