>>13106874Blame Congress. They were slashing NASA's budget back to a pittance even before Apollo 11 had even left the launchpad. Apollo 18, 19, and 20 were cancelled for this very reason.
>>13106885>for the most part the main reason to go is for dick waivingThe main reasons to go are:
>to learn how to live off-planet for extended periods of time without traveling all the fucking way to Mars>to figure out whether or not there's water ice in the permanently dark areas of the lunar poles>to get newspace involved in something other than the ISS and to further incentivize commercial exploration of spaceThe difference between the Earth's distance to the Moon and Mars puts things into perspective. At its close approach to Earth in 2020, Mars was over 160x farther from Earth than the Moon is, and that close of an approach only occurs once every 26 months. If the distance between the Earth to the Moon was shrunken down to be a single solitary inch, Mars would be almost 13 and a half feet away during a close approach. Learning how to colonize our solar system by going directly to Mars is the equivalent of a suburban family from Southern California sending their kids off to go cub scouting in Alaska during the dead of winter. Learning the ropes on the moon will undoubtedly be much more forgiving than if we were to attempt such a venture on Mars.
