There are plenty of conspiracy theories about the US moon landing. All of them are naive and wrong, if you ask me. The one that bugs me the most is the one which claims that there are no more moon landings, because they were either technologically impossible back then, or in a variation, that they were real, but are technologically impossible today, because we lost the necessary means and heads to do so. That is very wrong and it‘s simple to show the inconsistencies with that perspective.
It All Began In 1919, Not In 1961
It is important to understand, that the project of a moon landing didn‘t start in 1961 with Kennedy announcing the plan to put a man on the moon before 1970. Nine years to figure out everything would indeed be a very short time frame. But the conceptual work for such an endeavor didn‘t start in 1961, but roughly in 1919 in Germany right after the signing of the Treaty Of Versailles.
Think Of Bitcoin Or Autonomous Drones
Early rocketry was a nerd fantasy as it is today hacking, blockchains/crypto or drones and robot stuff. Every nerd in Germany and possibly everywhere in the world was fascinated by the idea. Soon after WW1, there were multiple clubs forming all over Germany dedicated to figuring out how it would be possible. Regular magazines were published and widely circulated with articles and ideas by readers who also had the brains and enthusiasm to do calculations or even do tests with self-build rockets.
Wernher von Braun and Berlin
One of these voluntary researchers who later turned out to be also a very capable manager was Wernher von Braun. He was based in Berlin, which was back then one of the biggest cities on the planet. Despite the losses and reparations because of the war, Berlin was still quite wealthy and it had the necessary academic and industrial infrastructure to carry a breeding ground for something like a moon landing.
The Treaty Of Versailles Gave Them A Reason
Besides the enthusiasm and the technological and financial access, German rocket nerds had also an unlikely ally in the form of Germany‘s military and secret service. The Treaty Of Versailles strictly limited the number of artillery cannons Germany was allowed to have, which gave them a reason to look into rockets to replace classic artillery. Partly in the background, in some cases overtly and from the 1930s onward institutionally, the German rocket enthusiasts were groomed and supported with everything they needed to get to a positive result.
Peaceful Exploration Built On Military Tech
After the 2nd World War, but also before multiple German rocket engineers insisted on various occasions, that their goal had always been one of peaceful exploration, but that it had to be the military through which the development process had to go through to turn the idea of rocketry in to reality in the first place. That‘s why overall, the successful moon landing in 1969 was an effort that took 42 years of development and did indeed cost 300 Billion USD in today‘s prices throughout the entire time span. It was just not the US that paid most of the R&D effort, but Germany.
The US Was Losing The Cold War
Few are aware of this, but in the first phase of the Cold War, things didn‘t look particularly good for the West. Communism was despotic, raw and inefficient, but it was also ruthless in its efforts. All aspects of society in the Eastern Block were pointed to winning the Cold War at any costs, financially, socially or environmentally. If your plan is to kill 30% of a given society anyway in the process of turning it into a Communist paradise, there are no restraints, except of those which keep you in power.
Soviet Rocketry Was Evolution On Steroids
The consequence was that in the area of rocketry, which became vital with the development of compact nuclear bombs, the USSR had the advantage of burning through enough money, rockets and engineers that it needs to turn a complex and fragile mechanism into something robust and reliable. As only the ends justified the means, Russian rocketry went through its evolutionary process like on steroids. The results were stunning: First satellite in space, first animal in space (and dying there), first person in space and coming back home safely, first person to successfully make a space walk. Nobody knows exactly how many cosmonauts had to die before someone survived it, but at the end, someone did it and that was the only thing which counted for the Politburo.
The USSR Could Act From A Strategic Position Of Strength
With the advent of atomic and quantum physics, there were multiple fields, in which it was more important to explore, than to work out the details. That‘s why rocketry wasn‘t the only area, in which the USSR had a head start and critically threatened the USA and its allies with instigated terror, insurgencies and outright revolutions as well as civil wars. Strategically, the Communists were save enough to try and overthrow governments all over Asia, Africa and Latin America. The US needed an answer and had to seriously up its game.
Freedom Creates Wealth, But No Weapons Of Strategic War
The biggest obstacle for the US was its political system with a mostly private sector, which was very strong and lead to the rapid development of calculation machines. But it was not enough by a far cry. In order to catch up with the USSR‘s advantage on the level of strategic military capabilities, they would need hundreds of billions in defense expenditures. Getting such money a liberty oriented is close to impossible.
How Do You Justify A 300 Billion USD Military Budget?
Something drastic would have to happen like World War Two. The problem though was that such a war likely would have been lost due to the shortcomings in strategic military technology. Therefore, something else had to be found which would come with a broad consensus – meaning that it had to be something positive – and which ideally would inspire an entire generation. The question is: What would be better to achieve this than with the idea of a moon landing? They knew exactly what they were doing.
Most Of The Moon Landing Was Already Figured Out
By 1961, roughly 90% of the conceptual work on a moon landing was already done, while rockets were developed to a degree that they could reliably reach the upper limits of the earth‘s atmosphere. Humans weren‘t crammed yet into space flying capsules, but submarines at that time were already around for half a century.
What Was Still Missing For Landing On The Moon
What was still needed was a big multi-stage carrier rocket, a reliable dynamic target system and the infrastructure had to be built to house the R&D and all the practical engineering. The latter being the smallest issue as the US had created such a complex institution before with the Manhattan Project, while the top-manager of the project and many researchers and engineers had already built and managed such an institution before in Penemünde, Germany, and successfully so.
The Moon Landing „Only“ Cost 50 Billion USD
If you subtract all the R&D that wasn‘t exclusively needed for the manned moon landing, but was also crucial for the development of ICBMs and other military technology, then the moon landing did by no means cost 300 Billion USD. This number was only the official one to be presented to Congress and the people, to raise the money in the first place. Most of the budget – or the results of that – went straight into the military‘s R&D programs and made sure that the US along with its Western allies could close the gap in strategic weapons and soon overtake with the exploration phase going over into gradual improvement.
Nothing New Despite Its Prolonged Mega-Budget
One indicator for NASA#s real purpose as a civilian front for military R&D is that of the three consecutive moon landings, the development of a specialized moon rover was the only novelty. It cost a mere 400 Million USD in today‘s prices, which is not even half of what a new car model costs in R&D. With a budget in 1972 that was still around 75% of the budget in 1969, you would expect more. Although they did have new expensive projects like earth satellites, those were also for the most part hidden military expenditures, for which the civilian aspect only served as excuse for the public, as it is easier to get scientific grants than money for the military.
There Is No More Need For Moon Landing R&D
The main reason why there are no more moon landings is that all the technology needed in the military had already been developed in 1972. There was simply no more reason to do more. With Apollo 13 having such a dramatic end, the need became apparent for the development of an entirely new system to eliminate the critical error which lead to the catastrophe of Apollo 13, but also other issues that never made it to prominence. Since none of such a new system was useful for the military, the entire program was ended.
There Are No More Customers For Moon Landings
Not unlike the military, private investors had and still have for the most part no interest in moon landings. As of now, it is much cheaper and less risky to do profit oriented enterprises on earth or in its own orbit. The moon is a curiosity again, but none that would inspire investment or scientific money to fly there. Take for instance the idea of solar powered servers on the moon. There are places in the polar regions of the moon, where the sun shines 24 hours on every day of the year. With no law in place and nobody with the power to shut them down, you could only transfer input and output information, while calculating and storing data tax free on the moon. But you could do the same in earth‘s orbit and that‘s why there is no reason for anyone to go there.
Final Straw Moon Tourism
Finally, moon tourism might be an option, as it would be possible to built a logistical chain from earth to each a permanent space station in earth‘s and the moon‘s orbit and then a landing site with accommodations. The idea itself is intriguing and you could make moon tourism both relatively cheap and save with enough critical steps in between. If you consider what characteristics possible customers would need, it becomes clear that the idea likely won‘t be feasible in this century.
Too Few Possible Moon Tourists
Given the physical and mental stress, only adults between 20 and 60 years would be viable and of those, it would be perhaps one in five. Then you have the problem that not everyone is intrigued by the idea of spending two weeks in a steel coffin surrounded by the nothingness of space. Maybe one in ten would do it for the view or the experience of low gravity – and then, there is also the question of what such a trip would cost.
Even if you manage to cramp a dozen of customers into one spaceship, you would still need four highly qualified pilot-engineer-physician-psychologists and a system of triple redundancy to make sure that if things go wrong, that they can be fixed in a way that wouldn‘t repel future customers. A trip to the moon and back would likely cost 200 Million USD per paying customer. The fewest could afford this. This shrinks the overall global customer base to a few dozen per year, which is too little for a business with such a risk profile.
Bottom line: You don‘t have to be much of a history buff or an expert in business or technology. Knowing the broad strokes mixed with a bit of common sense clearly shows that the period with US moon landings went down pretty much exactly as you would expect.