Why is it so challenging to return to the moon if we’ve already been there? 1972 was the last time a human visited the Moon. Since then, technology has made enormous advancements, and more and more nations have created space programs, yet despite this, humans have not returned to the Moon. Why is this the case? Let’s find out!
The primary reason To discover the causes that led to the Moon mission, we must travel back to the end of the 1960s. After World War II, during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in the Space Race, a tenacious competition with the ultimate objective of landing a citizen of each nation on the Moon’s surface. The United States would emerge victorious from this conflict, in which both sides wanted to display their military and technological dominance over the opponent. More than a means to a goal, the mission to the Moon was a means to demonstrate to the world who will set the pace for the remainder of the century’s worldwide political agenda. Reaching the Moon served more political than scientific purposes. Would we have reached the Moon in 1969 out of sheer scientific interest if the historical situation had been different?
Political Climate
Everything suggests that it is not the case. As stated previously, the political climate was the impetus for the United States to send a human-crewed expedition to our satellite. Without this rivalry with the USSR, it would have been difficult for the American government to mobilize the almost 400,000 individuals who participated in the Apollo program and dedicated themselves to it for 14 years, the equivalent of approximately 120 billion dollars today. Today, it is inconceivable that the U.S. government would sponsor a similar trip at such a great expense to the country. The exorbitant price of returning to the moon In addition to the technological obstacles that will be discussed later, there were also numerous economic obstacles that made it difficult to reach the moon. A statute approved by President Donald Trump in March 2017 provides NASA with an annual budget of approximately $19.5 billion, which currently stands at nearly $20 billion.
However, if you consider that the total is divided among all of the agency’s divisions and ambitious projects such as the James Webb Space Telescope, the Space Launch System rocket project, and remote missions to the Sun, Jupiter, Mars, the asteroid belt, the Kuiper belt, and the edge of the solar system, it is not actually astronomical. In addition, NASA’s budget is quite minimal compared to previous years. Since 1960, the proportion of the national budget devoted to the American space program has risen, reaching a record 5.3% in 1965.
Five years later, in the early 1970s, when the United States had won the Space Race, NASA experienced a large budget drop for a variety of reasons, including the lack of political interest in the Moon and the Apollo 13 catastrophe. These events would result in the cancellation of the Apollo 18, 19, and 20 flights, making Apollo 17 the final voyage to the Moon with a human crew. As a result, NASA’s budget has been below 1% of the federal budget for the past 40 years and has been trending toward 0.4% over the past 15 years.
In other words, if we have not yet returned to the moon, it is due to a lack of interest on the part of governments and a lack of financial resources.
What became of technology?
Today NASA has the new rocket SLS (“Space Launch System”), which will be the successor of the Atlas V that was responsible for transporting astronauts to the Moon; this rocket made its debut with the launch of the Artemis 1 Mission, which was a success, transporting the Orion capsule to the orbit of the Moon; the Orion capsule is the new spacecraft that will transport humans to the lunar surface.
Before the launch of the Artemis1 mission, the rocket’s fuel chambers failed twice, necessitating further testing before the ship could be launched. This fact drew the attention of many people.
Why was the SLS launch so difficult?
Shouldn’t NASA already have years of experience? The truth is that the launches of the Apollo missions were not easy either; as you may recall, the mission that landed successfully was the eleventh; that is to say, before to the 11, ten attempts failed for various reasons, the majority of which were canceled due to weather or technical issues.
Some Apollo missions never even took off, yet this fact is rarely discussed. In addition, it is important to recall that despite its expertise with the Apollo spacecraft, NASA encountered numerous difficulties with the launch of the space shuttles. Since the fueling systems of the Saturn V rockets and Apollo spacecraft were different from those of the shuttle, they caused the vast majority of launch problems. The shuttles were very complicated machines that combined the power of a rocket with the aerodynamics of an airplane and had engines that could use both solid and liquid fuel.
This complexity was the source of all technical launch failures. According to the registry of launch cancellations, shuttle launches suffered the greatest cancellations; some were canceled as many as five times before safely launching. The issue with gasoline supply Before successfully launching, the Artemis 1 mission was canceled twice owing to technical difficulties in the fuel system; these failures are identical to those that prevented the Apollo missions and shuttles from taking flight.
Since the 1960s, fuel leaks have been the most common cause of rocket failure and one of the leading causes of launch cancellation.
Why does this problem still exist today?
Hydrogen, the fuel utilized by the rockets, is at fault. Hydrogen is the simplest and lightest element; it is abundant on Earth, but it is combined with other elements, thus electrolysis and other molecular separation techniques are required to acquire pure hydrogen. A single gram of matter requires billions of hydrogen atoms due to hydrogen’s extreme lightness. Hydrogen is so light that it can pass through any opening, no matter how small; in a regular atmosphere and at average temperatures, this is not an issue, but in a cold climate and at high pressures, leaks are more likely to occur.
Specifically in these settings do space rockets operate. In order for a rocket’s fuel tanks to remain full until launch, they must be continually connected to terrestrial cooling systems via cables and hoses. At the time of takeoff, certain connections detach from the bridge; it is here that leaks typically occur since these connections cannot be fastened tightly, and it is difficult to prevent leaks at high pressures and low temperatures. Because hydrogen is utilized as fuel, it is difficult for rockets to take flight.
If this is the issue, why not utilize a different fuel?
Reusing rockets NASA continues to utilize hydrogen fuel due to its high efficiency, as the element offers greater thrust with less mass. The law is yet another significant factor; we are not talking about physical laws, but rather political ones. The U.S. Congress mandated in 2010 that NASA continue using the shuttle rockets as part of the SLS rocket program; you may not realize it, but the SLS engines are identical to the shuttle engines.
As the budget was reduced, Congress advised that in order to optimize resources, NASA should leverage the contracts, investments, budget, labor, industrial base, and existing infrastructure in the United States that were utilized for the space shuttle program. Additionally, the existing propulsion systems, such as the liquid fuel engines that generate so many leaks, the external storage tank, and the solid fuel engines, would be repurposed.
All of this was repurposed and adapted for the Artemis 1 project. In other words, the Artemis project, which aims to send new people to the Moon, employs the same technology, rockets, engines, and launch site as the space shuttles did more than a decade ago. This is why returning to the Moon is so difficult; apart from touch displays, the Artemis 1 program’s technology is comparable to that of the 1960s.
Moreover, the simplest explanation for why we haven’t returned to the Moon is likely the most compelling: there has been no need to do so. In addition to the innumerable experiments conducted on the Moon, so many samples of lunar material were taken during Apollo missions that many of them remain unstudied by scientists to this day. In the future years, NASA will concentrate on projects such as Skylab, the laboratory in Earth orbit, and the deployment of probes and satellites to many other regions of the solar system.
Why should we return to the Moon when there is still so much to discover on the other planets?
In light of recent scientific advancements, NASA deserves no criticism. Today, robots are used to explore Mars, new solar systems are discovered practically daily, and phenomena such as gravitational waves, which were previously only theorized, have been detected. As we have shown, there are various reasons why we have not visited the Moon since 1972, but none of them have anything to do with, for instance, the bizarre conspiracy ideas that have circulated on social media for years.
Even though we have not yet returned, that does not imply we won’t. NASA’s Artemis project, which aspires to place a human back on the Moon, will mark the horizon of the next human-crewed journey to our satellite. In addition, it is possible that a woman imitates Neil Armstrong in 1969 by taking a new stride on the surface of our natural satellite.
