Man on the moon – is it worth it?

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In order to bring a dozen astronauts on the moon, has issued the NASA astronomical sums. In the absence of financial sustainability, the program was terminated prematurely. It wasn’t worth it so?

20. July 1969 installed Buzz Aldrin a solar wind collector on the moon

“We have chosen the moon as the target. Not because it is easy to get to, but just because it is hard.” U.S. President John F. Kennedy, 1962.

It was the height of the Cold war, the race of the systems. In front of the United States, the Soviet Union sent the first satellite and the first human into space. John F. Kennedy’s speech at Rice University in Houston in the fall of 1962 was a Declaration of war and the beginning of a race to catch up.

But she was also a recognition of the enormous challenges of the lunar program. With the word “hard” meant Kennedy, not only the technological challenge, but also the enormous financial burden. “Every American, whether man, woman or child, you must apply per week, about 50 cents,” said Kennedy more.

A Saturn V rocket cost $ 500 million and is the most powerful rocket ever built.

With these 50 Cent unmanned test flights, manned moon trips and, finally, a total of twelve hopping astronauts on the moon surface is financed – and also an unexpectedly spectacular rescue mission in the case of Apollo 13 were.

About ten years of the Apollo program lasted. NASA has spent, according to its own calculation of 23.9 billion US dollars for it. By today’s standards, the more than 100 billion would be.

Especially since the highly complex manned missions to the moon were made possible alone by the Apollo program. Many vital Tests – including and Pair in All as well as Leaving the space ship in a space suit – were to Navigate already in the also expensive the Gemini program been carried out.

In the age of the system, race, the manned moon landing, in fact, the core mission of NASA, the entire expenditure at the time represented about four percent of the Federal budget of the United States, accounting for. For comparison: NASA gets today, just less than 0.5 percent of the Federal budget.

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The most expensive footprint of all times?

Deterrent Cost

20.In July 1969, landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as first people on the moon, and reached next to the moon is also the political target: The United States proved in the race with the Soviet Union, their system of superiority. NASA published shortly afterwards ambitious plans of at least nine other landings on the moon, a mission to Mars seemed within reach.

Despite all the hype, the support of the American people was limited even in the year 1969. Surveys by the Pew Research center showed that only 53% of Americans thought the moon program for its cost value.

In the course of time of the restraint of the Apollo missions declined in the population even below 50%. And also in the world, there were critics. In a famous letter to the Zambian mission sister Mary Jucunda, in 1970, wrote pointedly to NASA: How to spend billions of dollars on space programs while still millions of children on earth starving to death?

Only a few months later, the U.S. Congress pulled the brake, partly for reasons of cost. In December 1972, the final was Apollo 17 final: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt are the last people on the moon.

Astronauts or better unmanned missions?

In the long term, the NASA, have paid off the Apollo program, but economical. In his Response to sister Jucunda Ernst chair Inger, Director of the NASA space research center in Huntsville, Alabama, space programs wrote are, like the research with the aid of a microscope. You should not set the support of the research due to acute famine, because microscopes could in the long term, help more people than short-term hunger relief.

In fact, many of today’s everyday objects are taken from the then manned space programs – from solar cells and scratch-resistant glasses glasses to to freeze-dried foods. According to information from NASA, the Apollo have created more than 3000 important patents. Most of them had found civilian application.

Everyone in the Apollo program invested US dollars would have at least dropped four to five US dollars in profit. In the long term, the cost amounts to-Benefit ratio of space travel for the entire company even more of a one-to-four-ten.

Nevertheless, there are still sharp critic of the Apollo program, even within NASA. Ex-mission member William Anders raised the accusation, Apollo is not “was not a scientific program.” “Had it not been for this race with the Russians, we would have had never the support of the taxpayers,” he said.

The former chief geologist of the NASA Eugene Shoemaker had even terminated shortly after the successful landing of Apollo 11. He took the view that the scientific output could be provided by unmanned probes with one-fifth of the cost, and already three to four years earlier.


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    Author: Philipp Jedicke