For the past 40 years it has remained below 1%, and for the last 15 years it has been driving toward 0.4% of the federal budget," Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham said during a 2015 congressional testimony. "NASA's portion of the federal budget peaked at 4% in 1965. Plus, NASA's budget is somewhat small relative to its past. One project within that budget - the modernization and now expansion of America's nuclear arsenal- may even cost as much as $1.7 trillion over 30 years.) (By contrast, the US military gets a budget of about $600 billion per year. A lunar base could even become a thriving off-world economy, perhaps one built around lunar space tourism.Įither amount sounds like a windfall - until you consider that the total gets split among all of the agency's divisions and ambitious projects: the James Webb Space Telescope, the giant rocket project called Space Launch System, and far-flung missions to the sun, Jupiter, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, the Kuiper Belt, and the edge of the solar system. Researchers and entrepreneurs think a crewed base on the moon could evolve into a fuel depot for deep-space missions, lead to the creation of unprecedented space telescopes, make it easier to live on Mars, and solve longstanding scientific mysteries about Earth and the moon's creation. More than 45 years after the most recent crewed moon landing - Apollo 17 in December 1972 - there are plenty of reasons to return people to Earth's giant, dusty satellite and stay there. But those week-long stays during the Apollo program didn't establish a lasting human presence on the moon. Landing 14 people on the moon remains one of NASA's greatest achievements, if not the greatest.Īstronauts collected rocks, took photos, performed experiments, planted some flags, and then came home. Private companies like Blue Origin or SpaceX may be the first entities to return people to the moon.Astronauts often say the biggest reasons why humans haven't returned to the lunar surface are budgetary and political hurdles - not scientific or technical challenges.Over the decades, NASA planned to send people back to the moon but has yet to succeed.The last time a person visited the moon was in December 1972, during NASA's Apollo 17 mission.
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