Rand Simberg

Forty-five years ago this coming Sunday, in a stunning, unimaginable historical achievement, men from earth first walked on its moon. But for over four decades now, no one has gone further than a couple hundred miles or so, a thousand times less distant, from our home planet.

Why did we spend so much to go to another world, and then almost completely abandon the effort?

It was because we did it for the wrong reason.

The Apollo moon program was never really about space, or opening it to America or humanity. It was a peaceful battle in an existential war. In the post-Sputnik panic, the priority was not to do it affordably or sustainably but, to do it quickly — before the end of the decade, and win the race.

Wernher von Braun, originally envisioned fleets of low-cost reusable launch vehicles to deliver parts to assemble into larger systems in low earth orbit that could head out to the moon and planets. But at the time there were too many technical uncertainties to do that quickly, with confidence. Building a giant throw-away rocket to get the astronauts all the way to the moon and back from Florida was deemed the fastest, surest way to do it, albeit a very inefficient and costly one. Each lunar mission cost a few billion dollars in today's currency.

But Apollo succeeded at its narrowly proscribed goal of "...landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth," in 1969. And in so doing it provided a proof of how to send humans beyond earth orbit that haunts and hobbles us to this day.

In the Melanesian islands, an interesting cultural phenomenon developed in the wake of contact with western civilization. The Europeans or Americans would come in, and build wharves, runways and control towers. Ships and planes would then appear bearing goods never seen before. After westerners left, "cargo cults" arose among the Melanesians. For years afterward, they would build thatch docks or control towers or frond airplanes in expectation of the return of the manna from the seas and heavens. But because they didn't understand the underlying mechanisms, they waited in vain.

Similarly, many in the space community, remembering the glory of Apollo, repeatedly attempt to recreate it, not understanding the historical contingencies that improbably allowed it. They recall the goal, the date, and the ridiculously expensive large rocket, and hope that if only they can somehow repeat those things, we will once again send men (and this time women) out beyond low earth orbit. They lack the vision to conceive any other way of opening the solar system, though what has actually trapped us circling the earth for over 40 years is not the lack of a giant rocket, but the false belief that such a rocket is either necessary or sufficient to go beyond.

But regardless, the cultists in the Congress demand that NASA build the "Space Launch System," larger than the Saturn V that took men to the moon. There is no designated mission for it, and Congress hasn't properly funded any hardware that will actually fly on it, other than the Apollo-like Orion capsule. NASA's own plans have it flying once every couple years, a costly and very unreliable flight tempo and, like Apollo, costing billions per flight. Though the agency's own internal studies indicate that SLS-based plans are the most costly way to send humans into the solar system, the important thing to Congress is that it looks like Apollo, and not-so-coincidentally maintains jobs in the states and districts of those on the space committees.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has already shown the way to low-cost launch and plans to blazing a path to even lower costs through reusability, more in keeping with von Braun's original, more affordable vision until it was derailed by Apollo.

After over four decades, it is time to stop awaiting a repeat of a glorious but limited and improbable past. We must, finally, return to and embrace the true future, in which the solar system and ultimately the universe is opened up to all, with affordable, competing commercial transportation systems, in the way that only Americans can do it.

Rand Simberg is an aerospace engineer and author ofSafe is Not an Option.

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