Looking Back At Apollo 17, and Why We Stopped Going To the Moon (examiner.com)

MarkWhittington writes: The 43rd anniversary of the mission of Apollo 17, the last time men walked on the moon, has elicited a strange kind of nostalgia, and no little melancholia in some parts of the media. These qualities are captured in a story in IO9 that purports to tell us why no one has been back to the moon in over four decades and why we might soon return at last. Deadline Hollywood informs us that "The Last Man on the Moon," a documentary on Apollo moonwalker Gene Cernan, is set for a release to both theaters and video on demand in February, having been shown at film festivals for the past year or so,

Comments

Re:TL;DR

[alvinrod]

We stopped going to the moon because we beat the Soviet Union and they eventually collapsed. The space race was a dick waving contest with the possibility of learning how to put weapons in orbit.

The only reason the U.S. goes back to the moon will be because China wants to try doing it. Otherwise a moon landing is in the hands of the rich entrepreneurs who are holding their own private dick waving contests.

Re:TL;DR

[Koen Lefever]

You fell for the Gambler's fallacy.

You misunderstand gambler's fallacy.

Let's say the chance to come back alive is indeed 50%.
We had 8 missions. The chance for the 9th is still 50%.
We have no missions. What is the chance that we get 9 missions coming back alive? (1/2)^9 = 0.001953125 = 0.2%.

Gamblers fallacy would be saying after 8 successful missions that the change for the 9th is 0.2% - which is not what the GP said.

GP is talking about statistical significance.

If the chance top come back alive is 50%, we expect 4.5 out of 9 missions to come back alive.
Null hypothesis: The difference between 4.5 expected and 9 observed missions coming back alive is due to chance.
Alternative hypothesis: The chance to come back is higher than 50%
SD = sqrt((1/2)^2*(1/2)^2) = 0.25
z = (observed result - expected result)/SD = (9 - 4.5)/0.25 = 18
NormalCDF(18,infinity) = 1.04E-70% = the chance that the probability to come back alive is indeed 50%


Conclusion: GP is correct, it is very unlikely that the chance to come back alive was 50%.

My perspective (dating back to the early 1960s)

[bfwebster]

(A comment I made over at io9 as well.)

As someone who lived through the ‘false dawn of space travel’ (to use Heinlein’s phrase), who grew up intensely following the space program, and who actually worked at NASA/JSC on the Space Shuttle flight simulators back in 1979-80, I can give you my observation: the American people got bored with space. Seriously. No one (outside of a small group of space enthusiasts, such as myself) was clamoring for yet more Apollo missions. TV ratings of flight and moonwalk coverage sank to the basement. It was all just more men in space suits skipping around in a black-and-white environment.

With no public demand or support, neither Congress nor the White House had much stomach for pushing things forward, not when the funds had other uses. The NASA manned flight division evolved into a jobs program, which is why NASA fought against privatization of space flight for so long. (The NASA unmanned space exploration division continued to work miracles, even as it does to this day.)

Of course, the real root problem was that the Apollo approach was fundamentally flawed in the first place; as some wag put it decades ago, it was like building a cruise liner for a single crossing of the Atlantic and sinking everything but one lifeboat at the end of the trip. Prior to Kennedy’s challenge, the US was working on an incremental approach: SSTO (single stage to orbit), gliding re-entry, and a space station. We basically lost half a century due to the Apollo approach (and the horribly expensive, horribly fragile kludge that was the Space Shuttle). Frankly, NASA’s current Orion effort is a repeat of just about all the mistakes we made with Apollo and threatens to soak up NASA’s budget for years to come, even as goal dates keep getting pushed back more and more.

The night that Apollo 11 landed, I was part of a group of friends (we were all high school students) who stayed up all night to watch the coverage. When I heard the words, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”, I felt the future had begun. I was sure I would live long enough to visit LEO myself and to see humans colonize the moon and land on Mars. If you had described to me back in 1969 what the state of space exploration (and, in particular, US space exploration) would be in 2015, I would not have believed you. And yet here we are.

Re:economics

[argStyopa]

I'd actually disagree.

There is a tangible benefit as substantial as having a coaling station on the coast of Africa was in the 19th century, or having an unsinkable aircraft carrier called Hawaii or Diego Garcia today: the poles.

There are precisely 2 points on the moon that have (basically) uninterrupted line-of-sight to earth AND line of sight to the sun (ie power). Whoever gets there, and plants at least a basic base there, has a de-facto ownership based on occupancy.

Short of ejecting them by violence, that's forever. That's pretty important.

Might cost lives?

[swb]

Why is the loss of life in going into space always seen as such a big, scary risk with ruinous repercussions?

You want safe? Stay home and play in the back yard.

Pretty much any human exploration endeavor worth a damn risks life and limb -- exploring the poles, sailing to "the new world", etc.

Limiting space travel because somebody might die? That's lame.

Re:There was little to be gained by continuing to

[skam240]

I've never seen any evidence that the same left wing groups who opposed nuclear power opposed landing people on the moon. Those two issues seem very unrelated to me in fact.

Meanwhile, fiscal conservatism has always been the reason for NASA budget cuts in my experience. With a shrinking budget should NASA have kept landing people on the moon or invested its limited resources in other less understood aspects of our universe?