There were six missions to the moon... Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Why did we stop there?

[scheming daemons]

Here's my theories:

1. Watergate and the end of the Vietnam war came not long after the last moon shot. American "pride" was at an all time low. We were ashamed of our country, maybe even moreso than during Dubya's term. America's heart just wasn't in it anymore.

2. The energy crisis and rampant stagflation of the mid-70s consumed resources and focus in a way that left space exploration on the back burner.

3. The space shuttle program burned up most of NASA's budget and all of their focus for the next 25 years.


It's a shame. Part of what makes humans unique is our desire to explore.. to reach beyond our current scope of existence.

I think we need to feed that part of our nature again.

[WinkyDink]

1. Here's mine: It became pointless.

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. +1 for pointless, -1 for "became"

It was always pointless.

;-)

[Warren DeMontague]

6. Bullshit.

A great deal of what we now know -KNOW- about the origins of the moon is directly attributable to the Apollo missions. Get it? I'm not just talking about little technological spin-offs from the 1960s space program like, er, computers smaller than a closet.. I'm not talking about the clear imperative for humans to explore... I'm talking about hard science that was performed as a result of people GOING THERE, making observations and bringing samples back. We know things about the formation of the Earth-moon system that we had no idea about 40 years ago.

So- scientific knowledge about the Universe we live in is somehow "pointless"? Learning is "pointless"?

Yeah, whatever.

:eyes:

[Bill McBlueState]

63. good point

although we could probably figure out unmanned sample return if we wanted to.

[scheming daemons]

7. The technology in that cell phone you use wouldn't exist without the Apollo missions...

...nor would hundreds of other technological advancements that you take for granted.

What an assinine comment.

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. asinine

:rofl:

Pointless. The technology would have developed a hundred different ways. I always hear this argument, and I've even seen some of the documentation. All this stuff was being developed in a hundred different places at the same time. The notion that we wouldn't have cellphones unless people walked on the moon is laughable nonsense.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. Listen, just because they invented Tang for the astronauts...

it doesn't mean we wouldn't have invented Tang independently.

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. I didn't say the space program was pointless

It's been remarkably effective as an innovation incubator (though, indeed, most technological developments we actually use today were already coming out of other places). The moon mission itself was largely PR for the real military and commercial goals. And continues to function that way.

[drm604]

49. They didn't invent Tang for the astronauts.

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinfaq.htm#spinfaq12

Are Tang, Teflon, and Velcro NASA spinoffs?

Tang, Teflon, and Velcro, are not spinoffs of the Space Program. General Foods developed Tang in 1957, and it has been on supermarket shelves since 1959. In 1962, when astronaut John Glenn performed eating experiments in orbit, Tang was selected for the menu, launching the powdered drink’s heightened public awareness. NASA also raised the celebrity status of Teflon, a material invented for DuPont in 1938, when the Agency applied it to heat shields, space suits, and cargo hold liners. Velcro was used during the Apollo missions to anchor equipment for astronauts’ convenience in zero gravity situations. Although it is a Swiss invention from the 1940s, it has since been associated with the Space Program.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. Like Teflon, as well

amazing how many people don't realize just how much of the modern world comes from the moonshot... and quite of it good too

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

24. Teflon was invented in 1938.

Another moonshot myth.

[mopinko]

48. teflon sucks, anyway.

i love the space program. but teflon sucks.
don't think they actually had the technology to use it before the space program, tho.

[scheming daemons]

58. Teflon replies: "Whatever you say slides off of me and sticks to you"

:-P

[mopinko]

75. teflon tape can stay.

the rest of that stuff should go. teflon pans, teflon everything in the kitchen, teflon coating on clothes, even teflon toilet cleaner. out of here. and better safety practices for the workers. enough with the deformed babies already. and the dead birds, too.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

65. Ah, yes.

The pre-1938 space program. They don't talk about that a lot in schools.

[JVS]

26. That technology could have just as easily been developed in a quest to create a permanent....

space station.

[KittyWampus]

55. And that technology would have developed FASTER without manned space flight.

[scheming daemons]

57. There would have been nothing driving the research

Necessity really *IS* the mother of invention.

The Apollo missions (and other NASA projects) drove research that otherwise wouldn't have had a market.


Your post is completely incorrect.

[PVnRT]

60. How's that again?

I didn't realize private industry funded the kind of basic research that gave us the transistor.

[alcibiades_mystery]

82. Are you claiming that the transistor was invented in conjunction with the space program?

:wow:

I didn't realize that Bell Labs (i.e., AT&T) and Shockley Semiconductor were adjuncts of NASA. The "basic research" required for the invention of the transistor was very directly funded by AT&T through Bell Labs. Indeed, there's a good argument to be made that the transistor was a direct result of private industry, since it was invented at Bell Labs and subsequently improved in the hothouse of Silicon Valley through the various semiconductor offshoots. Needless to say, government support - both during and immediately after the war and throughout the period was huge, but it wasn't primarily moon mission driven, even where it was space related. Very obviously, drawing a line between government and industry during this period - at least where it comes to technological innovation - is a fruitless and stupid sort of affair. It was incestuous all the way down, with the military taking the lead. But that misses the point. My argument is not that the space program, as a general proposition, failed to contribute to technological development. It clearly did, as a historical matter. My argument, rather, is that a manned moon mission was largely a public relations cover for the more serious business of the space program during that time, which was more about military dominance than exploration.

But, seriously, you're way off on the transistor.

[nadinbrzezinski]

71. Really? How is that?

Damn it every tract in the history of science and technology is against that statement.

[Odin2005]

79. Bald-faced LIE!

That the space program boosted technological development is a FACT accepted by all reasonable people that aren't self-flagellating misanthropes.

[Political Heretic]

9. god, please save us from backwards idiots

Discovery is never pointless, and the technology advances developed through the apollo program give you most of the electronic comforts you take for granted now.

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Sure it did.

...

[SidneyCarton]

66. Agreed.

The technology and knowledge gained from the Apollo program has had benefits far greater than getting to the Moon.

[Johonny]

54. pretty much

[Odin2005]

78. Luddite BS!

:grr:

[alcibiades_mystery]

83. Far from it

No Luddite here.

[dysfunctional press]

15. pointlessly EXPENSIVE.

three more missions had been planned, but they were canceled.

[BlooInBloo]

2. Space shuttle....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_costs_and_cancellation

[Warren DeMontague]

4. I agree with you.

100%.

[ddeclue]

5. Vietnam War cost too much is the real reason.

[KakistocracyHater]

28. yes you got it

*

[timeforpeace]

70. Well it wasn't because of Jimmy Carter and don't let anyone tell you it was.

[MicaelS]

77. No it was that fuckwad Richard Nixon

Him and that idiot Gerald Ford and his "Whip Inflation Now" buttons.

[Subdivisions]

8. It became blasé... n/t

[ColbertWatcher]

12. Because NASA became more about contracts and rivalry than learning and exploration. n/t

[KakistocracyHater]

29. that too

*

[Bill McBlueState]

61. I think Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra

fit the "learning and exploration" mission pretty well.

[ColbertWatcher]

81. Agree. Hubble has been a great investment, even if you include the ...

... boondoggle when it was first sent into orbit.

[cherokeeprogressive]

14. My opinion, having Grandparents who worked for North American Aviation, then North American Rockwell

and then Rockwell is that the Americans, being fed their information by three news networks, were told that space exploration was passe, and that our attention and money should be directed toward other things.

[tammywammy]

18. I'd agree with that n/t

[Art_from_Ark]

19. We didn't stop space exploration with the end of Apollo

Far from it-- We just turned our attention to other projects in space in the '70s-- Apollo-Soyuz (first docking of two spacecraft from different countries), Skylab (one of the predecessors to the International Space Station), Mariner (unmanned exploration of Venus and Mercury), Viking (first unmanned landing on Mars), Pioneer and Voyageur (unmanned expeditions to the outer planets). The post-Apollo years were a great and exciting time for space exploration.

[cherokeeprogressive]

23. You're preaching to the choir.

I was a young boy who grew up with Grandparents who helped make it happen. Something changed with the end of the Apollo program, and it was that manned exploration wasn't worth the money. And to be honest, at the time, that may have been true.

[Art_from_Ark]

30. To be honest, where could one go on a manned expedition after the moon?

A manned expedition to Venus would be pointless, considering that unmanned spacecraft have been crushed and melted after they entered the Venusian atmosphere. A manned mission to Mercury would subject the astronauts to excessive amounts of solar radiation and excessively intensive solar light, among other things. The only logical candidate for manned exploration after the moon would be Mars. But the logistics of a manned mission to Mars of several months or even years are quite different from a 4-day trip to the moon. So manned exploration close to home, and unmanned exploration far from home, have been the only viable options so far.

[PVnRT]

45. Actually, the Soviets landed plenty of probes on Venus

They didn't last forever, and it would still be impossible to have a manned landing, but it is possible to get things on the surface of that planet.

[Art_from_Ark]

84. Some of the early Venera probes never made it to the surface intact

and the ones that did never lasted for more than an hour because of the heat and pressure. Good enough reason for not considering a manned mission to Venus.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. I personally loved the Voyager program

my all time favorite

[Art_from_Ark]

32. Yes, Voyager was particularly exciting because it visited so many planets

and provided so much information about the gas giants and their moons (and rings). And it has been the only man-made object to go beyond the orbit of Pluto.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. And it is still kicking...

but voyager is special to me... it was a science project for me... and I loved doing it. The photos of Europa were incredible

[Art_from_Ark]

37. The pictures of Europa were indeed incredible

and particularly exciting because Europa may have a giant sea of ice water under its frozen surface. The pictures of Io (were they from Voyager or Pioneer?) were also exciting because that moon seems to be a hotbed of volcanic activity-- as far as I know, it's home to the only confirmed active volcanoes in the Solar System outside of the Earth.

[Bill McBlueState]

62. me too

I saw the Voyager images of Jupiter and Saturn when I was 4 or so, and that got me started on the path to a career in astronomy research.

[givemebackmycountry]

16. Did you know...

That your Blackberry or IPhone or Palm Treo or Pre contain 600 times the computer power that was available to all of the Apollo missions combined?

That's saying something.

I wouldn't have a job right now if not for that.

I was 14, laying on the floor of my parents living room watch that shit happen.
I get to go to work tomorrow.

Funny how that shit works, huh?

[optimal-tomato]

21. The head of NASA ran out of fingers and toes.

...If only he hadn't gotten frostbite on that mountain climbing trip, we could have had more...

Wait, whut?

[laststeamtrain]

22. The 'left' did it. They hate space.

Who's with me?

[cherokeeprogressive]

27. Not me. The "left" thinks that maybe the money spend on space exploration might have been better

spent here on earth.

Being a member of the left, I'm inclined to agree.

[Posteritatis]

39. This member of the left thinks such zero-sum thought is silly. (nt)

[Warren DeMontague]

41. I don't know whose "left" you think you belong to.

Not his.



Certainly not mine.

[PVnRT]

44. Oh, just take a look in this thread

If only we cancelled all space funding, we could feed the homeless and solve every other problem in the country without having to cut Pentagon spending.

[nadinbrzezinski]

73. And they don't realize that space funding is a minuscule

part of the budget... I know

[nadinbrzezinski]

72. I'm a member of the left and I disagree

perhaps because quite a bit of the tech developed for it, I used for years as a rescue medic... including that silly thing called an MRE... you know dry freeze food that had to stay good in space also feeds countless rescue personnel and victims every disaster.

That is an example from the top of my head. One that I am sure you never thought about.

[MicaelS]

76. Oh please, "spent here on earth" my ass

Every fucking penny WAS spent right here on Earth. There's no Bank of the Moon or Mars or the Outer Planets, or denizens of same taking American jobs. Every fucking penny went to pay American workers wages. Skilled people and people with Masters and PhDs. People that bought homes and cars and major appliances and sent their children to college. It was not spent on people without education or skills working minimum wage flipping burgers. Which is your real point. What you're really saying is it should have been spent on entitlement programs. You're no different from someone on the right who whines about their taxes being too high, or spent on "a bunch of rocks" and then wants to give the Pentagon every fucking toy it wants.

[Warren DeMontague]

42. I don't know if it's hate so much as fear... anything that might excite people.

You have members of the self-appointed "left" that go buggy over pictures of nekkid people screwing, too.

I don't think it's a question of 'left' or 'right' so much as uptight neo-puritan ninnies versus people who can still dream big.

[tridim]

59. That propaganda must have been prevalent when I was a kid..

Because I remember telling my aunt that I wanted to be a Republican because they're for space exploration. Good thing I wised up a bit as I got older.

[Maru Kitteh]

31. It is a damn shame. Earthrise got us all to thinking about how we are in this together on this blue

world. We did something that was bigger than us, and it made us stop and think.

Discovery and exploration are always worthwhile. We should go back.

[oldtime dfl_er]

33. I miss Space Food Sticks

DAmn I loved those things!

[havocmom]

35. Land developers figured they couldn't sell tract homes there

and it was sorta far for commercial shipping?

You are right, we need to nurture our inquisitive 'what if' side. Alas, the people who have been in charge since then don't like personal risks. And by 'personal' I mean: they have other sure fire ways to make a buck.

We have sunk to our lowest common denominator, and cheney is the most accurate illustration of the problem with common denominators.

[Wednesdays]

53. Nail, meet hammer.

Nobody was making huge profits off of the moon (no oil), and by the 70s we had the beginning of the of "profit, profit, profit" and "cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes" movement that swept the Reagan team into power. The whole mantra that the space program was a waste of money (unless connected to military endeavors) has persisted ever since. Even as recently as 2 or 3 years ago, there was little serious discussion about new manned exploration, even here on DU.

That we're beginning to discuss it again, to me, is a refreshing change.

[Confusious]

36. I love some of posts you've gotten

"No it was to expensive", "it had no point"

Nice to see some people here giving good cranky dad advice.

"no, you shouldn't do that, go for the mundane" "work that 9 to 5"

How many scientists did it inspire to go into the field, to create solutions to the problems we face today?

No, maybe you should just keep your nose in the ground and not look beyond there.

If you root around long enough, you'll find solutions to problems we've had for 5000 years in muck that been turned over just as long. I'm sure of it.

[dysfunctional press]

38. going to the moon was more about the cold war than space exploration.

there was even worry about going to bed by the light of a soviet moon.

[Art_from_Ark]

40. No, none of those apply

After 6 successful manned moon missions, and nearly a decade of preparation before that, NASA merely turned its attention toward other exploration projects-- and there were lots in the '70s. As I mentioned up-thread, these included the manned missions of Apollo-Soyuz and Skylab, and the unmanned missions of Mariner, Viking, Pioneer, and Voyage. The unmanned missions targeted all other planets in the Solar System except for Pluto. So there were quite a lot of space missions for one decade, actually.

[ngant17]

43. No longer needed to conduct mass-psychological operations,

or propaganda techniques, to divert the US public's attention from the madness of the war in SE Asia.

During the years 1969-71, when the US was waging a massive, imperialist war against the popular liberation of Vietnam, at the exact same time, it conducted a strongly nationalistic, manned space exploration to the moon. These two massive endeavors were often coordinated together in such a way as to compliment each other, or at least to reduce the negative and unpopular impact that one or the other was creating for the American people.

This was once suggested early on, that the publicity of Apollo missions were being used to divert the public's attention from the war in Vietnam. A commentary of 5 February 1971 by the Washington columnist Jack W. Germond mentioned this possibility, albeit briefly, and I quote:

"At the White House Wednesday, someone asked (Nixon) presidential press secretary Ronald Ziegler if the news of the new military operations in Laos was being delayed to coincide with the news of a successful Apollo 14 landing on the moon…he implication was that the good tidings of another space spectacular might bury the bad news of some wider involvement President Nixon was planning in Indochina…he display of journalistic cynicism wasn’t significant in itself; no one believes a widening of the war in Asia can be overshadowed even by a moon landing. But it was symptomatic of a mood of general skepticism here about the Nixon course in Southeast Asia…he underlying cause of the skepticism is, of course, the incursion into Cambodia Nixon ordered last May…".

Pres. Nixon announced his so-called "Nixon Doctrine" in a televised speech at almost the exact day that the Apollo 11 astronauts returned from the first manned lunar landing in 1969. Hooray for the good guys? NOT!

[sendero]

46. Because big business couldn't find a way ..

.... to make money from moon shots.

[harun]

47. Been there done that. Majority of people didn't care about it anymore and

for good reason. Once accomplished, what else did it do to that impacted their daily lives?

[Froward69]

50. Instead of throwing money

down a hole. it had became throwing money up into outer space. with Vietnam eating the rest of the budget going to the moon became pointless.

[PHIMG]

51. #3 - The pentagon made NASA do the shuttle

SO they could lift and service all thier secret spy satellites.

I also think that a lot of science exploration has been cut to prevent any discoveries that would endanger the oil, gas, and coal industries.

For example, Reagan cut all the Carter energy programs and set us back 30 years on alternatives.

Innovation can be bad if you are an entrenched energy cartel. Big Energy owns the Republican party and most of the Democratic Party.

The Hydrogen Hoax (google it) is the latest example, though Obama isn't playing along as much as Clinton/Gore did.

[drm604]

52. It became politically unpopular to continue to spend the money.

It could be argued that government investment in that kind of high tech has a net positive effect economically, but the average man in the street didn't see it that way so it became politically unpopular.

[drm604]

56. NASA spinoffs.

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/

This isn't an answer to your question, but it seems to belong in this thread. I'll grant that it's NASA PR, so take it for what it's worth. My personal opinion is that government investment in high tech and pure science has a net benefit effect on the economy. Private enterprise is understandably reluctant to invest in research that doesn't have an immediate and obvious ROI.

[DearAbby]

64. I have it on the QT

the old man of the moon told them to " GET OF MY LAWN!"



PS: No relation to John McCain

[LanternWaste]

67. I would imagine a combination of...

I would imagine a combination of a cultural-scientific cost/benefit analysis, and better (and by definition, safer) non-manned survey missions which could, for all intents and purposes, glean the same amount of information (if not more; e.g., the Hubble) as manned surveys could.

I would think that the stutters, hiccups, and false starts that began the European age of exploration were far greater in length, drama, and scope than our current, one-generation false-start.

[timeforpeace]

68. Ever go back someplace cool over and over until it gets old?

[Occam Bandage]

69. Here's another theory: it was expensive, and there was no benefit to be gained

from yet another moon landing. Is it really "exploration" when you've done it six times already?

[Greyhound]

74. Politics.

The graft-hounds in DC saw a pile of money that they weren't getting enough of and NASA became more about bureaucratic infighting and turf wars than science.

The result was that the next step was never even proposed.

[Odin2005]

80. After we beat the Russians NASA became something the GOP could bash as "wasteful spending"

It became a popular target for Pukes like William Proxmire spewing BS about "tax-and-spend liberals".

[drm604]

86. Proxmire was a Democrat.

For the sake of accuracy.
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=P000553

[Odin2005]

87. DOH, my bad!

[drm604]

88. Space exploration didn't seem to be a left or right issue at the time

and it still doesn't seem to be, at least to me.

You can find people with all different opinions on both sides. In fact, I think the most predictable opponents of space exploration are probably the far right (government spending should be minimal to none) and the far left (solve all of our problems on Earth first).

[TheKentuckian]

85. It didn't mesh well with the massive push for anti-intellectualism and hatred of "other"

Can't have a nation of children dreaming of exploration of the galaxy and filling their heads with science and such. Curiosity, imagination, and knowledge are terribly toxic to Republicanisim and we can't have nonsense like exploring the galaxy going on full tilt and at the same time perpetrate the insanity of last generation.

You can't have a national focus on something like manned space flight and go hard anti-science and make intellectualism a negative thing. The drive to dumb us down is absolutely crucial to the agenda and the manned space program was feeding something in the hearts and minds of far too many to be conducive to the gameplan. Hell, I believe one of the reasons they love pollution so much is that it obscures the sky which has a powerful closing effect on the mind. The like people looking down rather than up and focused on now versus tomorrow.

Manned flight makes it personal, weaving data into a compelling story. Sending people ties us to the discoveries and many of the efforts leading up to them. Probes are more effective and far cheaper but they do not engender the connections nor stir the imagination in the same way. These things can't be quantified but are still beyond priceless. The moneychanger's mentality is too pervasive. There are fundamentals that are beyond the numbers and simply don't show up in the ledger. That or our ability to account for factors is less than we'd imagine.

The further we've gotten from man pushing the envelope the dumber and the more incurious we've become, that I can see, and it has cost us many times more than sending a man to Saturn and back rather than the Moon. For almost a generation Americans looked up to the sky rather than the neighbor's driveways and their own hands on the grindstones from time to time and you can't begin calculate the benefits of that.

[conscious evolution]

89. What I remember

is that the Apollo program was only funded for 12 Saturn vehicles.When they were used up the plan was to develope the next generation of space vehicles,ie.,the shuttles.
Unfortunately,it looks like the riech wing politicians would rather focus on issues that dumb down society instead.They know that a smart society will see through their dark age belief systems so they had to destroy science education and anything that uplifts humanity.