We spent the better part of 50 years pouring most of our launch funding (which was reduced compared to the Apollo years) into the Space Shuttle program, which was never as efficient as hoped. (In part because it is a jobs and corporate welfare program as well as a space program.)
Hell, aside from SpaceX and a few similar efforts, we're still pouring most of our launch funding into the Space Shuttle Program, via it's SLS successor - currently over $11 billion spent on a program that has had, to date, one launch.
SpaceX can reliably deliver payloads to orbit at much cheaper prices than anything before. The Moon program had its share of disasters, near-disasters and other failures (Apollo 1 burned with all its crew on the ground). Starship is a vehicle in development and will obviously have all sorts of bugs and edge cases to be worked out.
Don't post conspiracy theories that aren't even worth debunking here. In the same vein people are tired of debunking noahs ark, the young earth, the flat earth, and intelligent design. It's just tiresome at this juncture. It is a waste of everyone's time and if you insist on doing it you can do it on facebook instead.
The real trick would have been sending the astronauts on a rocket into Earth orbit for over a week without being detected by Soviet radar operators, who would have been more than eager to share the coordinates with the world, and then somehow sending radio signals back to Earth always from the direction of the moon. https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories...
Say I make up a conspiracy theory that wheelerof4te is secretly the alt account of Putin. This theory explodes into the public consciousness. Pretty soon the US and European press is talking about it. Putin goes on the record "Hacker news what?" Server logs show that the user is connecting from a ISP in the UK. Someone bribes your ISP for your physical address. The international press descends. You give a press conference where you admit you are the user in question. People show that the same pseudonym is used on other sites that all trace back to you. 1/3 of the planet now knows your name here and your real name. The evidence is obvious and conclusive.
Then for another 40 odd years people randomly spout off did you hear Putin posts as wheelerof4te on Hacker News.
The reason they don't get a strong refutation with evidence is that merely by opening their mouth metaphorically they have proved they have very little interest in reasonable argument. For the record you being literally Putin, crazy as it is, is actually a more reasonable theory than the moon landing being faked.
On a related note Russia due to its anti western propoganda is one of the few places this isn't a massively fringe theory.
You are unlikely to buy any of this I'm aware but have you ever found yourself arguing with a young earth creationist? It's the same feeling.
You are speaking from a position where the Moon landing is a proven, undisputed fact verified by everyone. In order for it to be that, it needs to be done again. Speaking plainly, it needs to be repeated in a reasonable enough timeframe, just like every other experiment done in history, in order for it to become a scientific fact.
Instead of admitting that logical conclusion, you are pulling a strawman on me. Our discussion is over.
Historical events are by definition not repeatable and facts don't need to be repeated. For instance we don't need to repeat WWII for it to have happened. It is sufficient to examine the historical record. The fact that you don't understand the difference between scientific fact and historical fact makes it hard communicate with you.
You yourself mentioned an experiment that can be repeated, bouncing light off those reflectors, its been done we went to the moon. A better question than "Did we go to the moon?" would be why do you want to believe we didn't?
Is it anti western propaganda that you've swallowed uncritically?
"Is it anti western propaganda that you've swallowed uncritically?"
No, just common sense after looking at the pictures from NASA's archive. And also, looking at all the hard evidence presented by this guy convinced me that there is ZERO chance any human ever went to the Moon:
https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/moondoggie-1/
As for the other "conspiracies", 9/11 being an inside job, and JFK being murdered for going after the FED and Isreali nuclear programme.
Apollo missions were done at incredible expense, and didn’t provide any longevity.
We’ve had humans in orbit on the ISS continuously for decades, sent probes to the edge of the solar system, landed multiple robots on Mars, and revolutionized our understanding of space and physics with space telescopes.
The biggest obstacle to space exploration was a contracting that didn’t bring down costs, and the thing that makes space so exciting now is high cadence low cost launches
The SpaceX flights are way more efficient and reproducible than the Apollo missions ever were. The only reason they aren't regularly going to the moon is that there isn't a strong incentive to do so.
Do you have any idea how many completely uneventful flights Falcon 9 vehicles have flown? The most recent version (the FT which had its first flight in 2015) has had precisely zero failures across 254 launches.
They have a better safety record than any other launch vehicle in history, including the Saturn V and the Shuttle.
The deaths stemming from those programs have held back interest in manned space exploration more than any failed test flight ever will.
Yes, wheelerof4te is trolling. He's a Moon landing denialist, but he likes to beat around the bush a lot (e.g. waste your time) before getting to that. Asking a lot of dumb questions like "if [whatever rocket] is so advanced then why hasn't it been to the Moon?" In his mind the answer to these questions is that we've never been to the Moon in the first place.
I remember him doing this routine in another thread earlier this week:
That’s easy. Give NASA 4-5% of the federal budget like it had in the 60s and we’ll go back in no time. This stuff is ridiculously expensive. It’s not the “how”, it’s the political “why” that doesn’t have an answer right now.
Elon Musk doesn’t have 4-5% of the federal budget and SpaceX is well on their way to doing it. I agree with the parent, there’s something else going on, either with society, or our government.
SpaceX is well in their way to doing it, but 50+ years later, relying on advances in material sciences and production capabilities to reduce the cost. None of this seems fishy to me. As a nation we decided to do something, damn the cost, and when we decided that was no longer important to do, it took decades of advances before advances brought the cost down to the realm that corporations could begin to attempt to do the same.
NASA doesn't have 4-5% of the federal budget but is about to do it again on the Artemis missions with one hand tied behind their backs on Congressionally-mandated designs.
The grandparent is actually arguing that the difficulty we are having now is proof that nasa faked the moon landing something not even worth debunking.
Are you really suggesting what I think you're suggesting?
Pretty sure we can land things on the moon if we needed to. We just placed the James Webb Telescope there. We just don't have the political will or necessity. Ho long was it between the first trip to the South Pole and the first permanent base? 1911 to 1944. And that was on Earth, where supplying that base is much easier than the humongous expenditure it was to go to the Moon or supply a lunar base there.
Sibling comment made a good point about how the hot stuff in science 60-70 years ago was rocketry and physics where now so much "talent" is in "computer science".
Another thing: we are trying to do things a lot better than we did 60 years ago - fully reusable craft that, I assume, practically flies itself.
Even if the physics is well established, I believe you need people who have spent their 10,000 hours learning and practicing with it in order to make the best use of it.
