Why have we never returned to the moon?

Question

Or have we never gone to begin with? Was it just the greatest hoax ever pulled by the government?

Answer 1

Because the space agencies don't think the moon is worthy to be explored again. But the moon age might rise again, because an idea of a launchpad for future rockets to Mars or beyond is planned.

Answer 2

The greatest hoax ever pulled off by the government was when Obama said that America was smart in his speech, because if people are thinking the moon landing was faked then we aren't.

The moon landing was real, and personally, I have yet to hear a semi-convincing conspiracy theory. They're all pathetic.

As for *why* we haven't gone to the moon, that is extremely simple. Nowadays, we would spend billions of dollars on one landing. Why would we spend billions of YOUR tax paying dollars towards landing on a boring white object we've landed on 6 successful times before? We did all we needed to, and even more- we proved that all objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum, we proved there was no life on the moon, we put our flag there, and stuck our tongues out at the Russians because we won. Why would we do it again?

America was loosing interest in the Apollo program after Apollo-12. After the failure of Apollo-13, the government was about to drop it. But NASA managed to hold out through Apollo-17, and all other missions were dropped.  

Answer 3

wtf we never lived on the moon...

Answer 4

mehh, why would we

nothin to do there really, just a big rock

no decent clubs or sports or anything...=/

Answer 5

We did go back we have gone there a total of 6 times. The last of the moon landings was in 1972.  

Answer 6

it was no hoax. i think it is just very costly and there are lots of other things to explore like mars.

Answer 7

We _are_ planning to go back to the moon--China intends to fly a manned mission there sometime in the next 20 years.

Answer 8

The USA have not returned, because nobody was really interested to pay the bill. Do you have 150 billion USD spare? that is the past and current price for a lunar program.

And it was no hoax. Maybe US citizens are believing anything if it is in TV, but the Russians don't, especially when it comes from the enemy at that time. The amount of technology required for cheating the nine deep space missions (6 lunar landings, 2 lunar orbit missions, 1 lunar fly-by) so that the Russians with their own deep space network, telescopes and radar technology don't notice it, would have been even more expensive in 1969 as just sending some astronauts to the moon.

For example, you would have needed to cheat the Doppler effect. That is not easy, especially not for radar returns. The Doppler shift of the radio signals of spacecraft gets used since the dawn of spaceflight for measuring the relative velocity of a spacecraft to the observer. This can be done so accurate by the receiving stations, that you can calculate the position and velocity of a spacecraft with only small errors - sometimes even more accurate as the calculations by on-board navigation systems. We still have no system which can fake doppler shift for a wide range of wavelengths, only complex and expensive military ECM systems, which can disturb such measurements.

If the USA did not land a massive video player with a automatic tape robot on the moon, together with a small rover to simulate the rover using in Apollo 15, 16 and 17, the Russians would have found it out.

And when the LRO gets launched next year, anybody can look at the landing sites again to see the equipment left behind.  

Answer 9

*cough* *cough* never happened in first place *cough* *cough*

Answer 10

I guess the moon has nothing more to offer than a bright light in the sky.

Answer 11

It wasn't a hoax.  It costs alot of money to go to the moon and going there again will not be beneficial.  Spending money and time on other things is much more valuable to science and astronomy.  Going to the moon the first time was to send a statement.  Going again would be a waste because it would not advance anything.

Answer 12

It's too expensive and we've learn so much from it.

Answer 13

Better to put our efforts on Mars.

Answer 14

Going to the moon was kind of a publicity stunt. It put the appearance of a positive effect on what was really proof of the ability to deliver a nuclear missile with high precision.  

Yes, it was real. Many nations including some who were and are still adversarial to the US verified that it was genuine.

Answer 15

We did go back:  six more times after Armstrong and Aldrin.  One mission failed because of a technical glitch.  The rest succeeded, and Apollo 17 spent three days on the Moon and allowed Harvard geology professor Harrison Schmitt the unprecedented opportunity to study another world first-hand.

If you want to know who's responsible for not going back to the Moon more frequently or sooner, go look in the mirror.  It's not the space agencies that don't want to do it.  It's not even the government that doesn't want to do it.  It's the American people.  Congress and NASA ostensibly do what we tell them to do.  If we tell them to return to the Moon, they're duty-bound to do it, or at least make a good try of it.  But the public lost interest in Moon landings not too long after Apollo 11, and the Nixon administration wasn't interested in trying to hype it back up again.

The notion that this lack of interest is somehow evidence of a hoaxed landing in the first place is simply ludicrous.  The argument goes something like this:  we have the technology, so why not just use it?  Unfortunately we *had* the technology, but after no one was interested in using it anymore it was dismantled and the people who built and operated it were assigned to more useful things.

If you decide you're tired of mowing the lawn and you let your lawn mower rust, or sell it, then if you should later decide you want to take care of your hard again, you've got some work to do getting your lawnmower working again, or getting it back from the person you sold it to.

The fact remains that the Moon is a very hostile environment that requires some sophisticated, expensive, and very specialized equipment to get people to it.  You don't just casually keep it around and keep it working if there's no desire to go.

Similarly the deep ocean is hostile and of little actual value.  In 1960 two people descended in a bathyscaphe to the deepest portion of the oceans:  the Challenger Deep.  That's a record that still stands today.  That is: nobody has been back since.  Does that fact alone mean you're ready to call Piccard and Walsh liars and say their voyage too was hoaxed?  Or is there, in fact, a much heavier burden of proof required to establish a hoax?  Isn't it more likely that one does not simply tread lightly into hostile environments?

And I've got news for you:  Apollo was not "pulled off" by "the government."  It was operated by private industry, by nearly half a million regular Americans.  You gonna call all those people liars too?

Answer 16

The cost is a huge part of this puzzle. Another piece is the fact that going to the moon was largely a political escapade designed to "beat the Russians", which we did. Had we found something commercially profitable or scientifically really important in the moon expeditions, we would have gone back.

Answer 17

Oh, we've been.  But, we spent too much getting there, and for the wrong reasons - we wanted to *finally* beat the Russians at something in space.  It was a terrific feat, but the people of the US got tired of it quickly.  

Congress cut funds to the program, and, without a valid reason to return - it was never done.  

Biggest mistake in US history, IMHO....

Answer 18

We have not gone back becasue of "The Law of Diminishing Returns" -- every piece of new information you learn costs more and more to larn it.

In other words, it is too expensive, and we don't learn enough.

If and when the Mars program gets started, it may make sense to have a "base" on the moon, and then we'll start returning.

Answer 19

Some people cling to their ideas after it's been disproven. All the conspiracists's ideas have been disproven yet they stilll say it's a hoax.

The truth is, we already know about the Moon. We don't need to travel back there after we know everything we need to know. It would be a waste of money sending a shuttle up with men and women on it that could die (Challenger) and it's waste of money.

Answer 20

It's because the Americans couldn't get the McDonalds lunar franchise.

Answer 21

no, the government has pulled off bigger hoaxes than that.  for example, convincing the country that we need them.

Answer 22

Simple Answer:

The public lost interest, the government cut back on NASA's budget, the very expensive moon program was cut to enable other more cost effective projects to be fulfilled, such as robotic exploration of the solar system, new rockets, the space shuttle, space stations etc.

We've spent the last 30 years exploring on a shoe string budget. Kudos to the NASA scientists!