U.S. astronauts won’t set foot on the Moon until September 2026 at the earliest, following NASA’s announcement of multiple delays to Artemis missions stemming from safety concerns for astronauts flying aboard the Orion spacecraft, and the need for further development of key technologies.
Well maybe that was the big difference after all. I’m not saying the moon landing didn’t happen, only that it’s weird we could do it back then - when you’d think we would’ve come farther and closer to doing it again by now.
I certainly want to see us not just return to the moon but go farther and farther.
We wasted 30 years puttering around low Earth orbit with the space shuttle without making any real progress at all, meanwhile all the old Apollo engineers have retired or passed away, and the infrastructure to build everything doesn’t exist anymore (for instance, the F-1 engine. To build that again, you’d have to rebuild all the tooling and test equipment that was used to make it as well). So we basically have to almost start from scratch.
Sad but true. I only hope it happens because, I want my moon mansion and moon maidens.