Apollo 17 and NASA’s last Moon mission — but why humans haven’t been back since?

Why? Well, the main reason is money. The cost of getting to the Moon is unbelievably expensive, and today holds little reward to cost ratio. Before it took off, the first mission, Apollo 11, was estimated to cost around $7billion (£5.7billion) dollars. That figure in the end came out to $20billion (£16billion). Adjusted for inflation, NASA’s annual budget today is nowhere near that figure.

And there is another element, too: politics. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Insider in 2019 that “if it wasn’t for the political risk, we would be on the Moon right now”.

Interestingly, he added: “In fact, we would probably be on Mars.”

Mr Bridenstine explicitly drew attention to the role politics has to play in NASA’s ambitions: “It was the political risks that prevented it from happening.

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Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1707517/apollo-17-nasa-moon-mission-space-spt