Why haven't humans flown to the Moon for half a century?

When the USA landed the first human on the Moon in 1969 (Apollo 11 mission), it was not just a scientific achievement, but the culmination of the Cold War. The Apollo program emerged as a response to Soviet successes in space and was directly linked to the geopolitical confrontation between the USA and the USSR. But after the goal was achieved, the rationale for continuing expensive missions gradually disappeared.

Although subsequent landings brought significant scientific material, American voters did not see enough value in it and perceived the program as a waste of billions of dollars. Already in the early 1970s, the question "why return to the Moon if the main race has already been won?" was increasingly heard in society and politics.

Ultimately, the financial factor became decisive. The Apollo program was extremely expensive, and without strong political motivation, it became impossible to maintain it on the same scale.

Return to Earth's Orbit

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reoriented itself towards tasks that seemed more practical: creating reusable spacecraft and long-term operations in low Earth orbit. This is how the Space Shuttle program emerged, which, after years of delays and technological difficulties, first launched a spacecraft into orbit in 1981 (STS-1 mission).

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It was conceived as a means to make space flights significantly cheaper and as transport for a future permanent space base. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan approved the project for such a base — the future International Space Station (ISS), the first module of which was launched into orbit in 1998.

In the late 1980s, an attempt was made to return to ambitious plans. In 1989, on the 20th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's landing, President George H.W. Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative: returning humans to the Moon and flying to Mars. But it quickly became clear that this was practically impossible to implement: an internal NASA study (1990) estimated the program's cost at about half a trillion dollars. Congress almost immediately lost interest.

At that time, the agency was busy with other problems. After the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986, NASA focused on resuming flights. The space station project was delayed and becoming more expensive, and in 1990, a new blow to its reputation arose — it was discovered that the Hubble Space Telescope had a defective mirror. Politicians and media criticized NASA as an expensive and inefficient structure.

An additional factor — the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the end of the Cold War — deprived the space program of its main geopolitical stimulus. Returning to the Moon simply disappeared from the agenda under these circumstances. Even the International Space Station itself in the early 1990s was almost shut down and survived largely due to cooperation with Russia.

The second serious barrier, as Popular Mechanics writes, was the gradual loss of practical skills. This was not a sudden catastrophe — knowledge did not disappear overnight. But people who knew how to create highly specialized components for flights to the Moon were retiring, and production chains were disintegrating. As a result, many technologies effectively had to be recreated.

The Moon as a Base for Flights to Mars

A new attempt to return to the Moon began after another tragedy — the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003. In 2004, President George W. Bush announced a new space strategy (Vision for Space Exploration): phasing out the shuttles, completing the ISS, and developing new spacecraft for flights to the Moon and then to Mars.

Within this framework, the Constellation Program (2005-2009) was created, which was supposed to return humans to the Moon by 2019. But it lacked funding from the very beginning and experienced delays. As a result, the program was canceled by the Barack Obama administration in 2010.

However, this did not mean the end of lunar ambitions. After the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, funds were freed up, but there was a threat of mass layoffs in the space industry. The US Congress effectively forced NASA to continue developments to preserve jobs and infrastructure.

This is how the Space Launch System (SLS; development since 2011) rocket and the Orion spacecraft appeared — direct successors of previous projects. Initially, they didn't even have a clear goal, but gradually a new strategy emerged: to create infrastructure for returning to the Moon.

The idea of flying to the Red Planet brought long-term meaning back to space programs, but it quickly became clear that it was currently impossible to do directly. Therefore, the Moon once again became a key stage — not as an ultimate goal, but as a platform for preparation.

The Artemis Program, which got its name in 2019 during Donald Trump's first administration, solidified this approach. Its task is to create a long-term base on the Moon and develop the technologies necessary for flights to Mars. Unlike previous attempts, it received support not only from the state but also from private companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, which significantly changed the project's economic model.

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Today's stage of returning to the Moon looks much more cautious than in the Apollo era. The "Artemis II" mission — the first crewed flight — does not involve a landing, but is intended to test whether the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket can safely deliver humans to the Moon and back. This is only the beginning of a long process that may take many more years.

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What about other countries?

Apart from the USA, China is implementing the most consistent and ambitious program for lunar exploration.

Since the 2010s, it has gradually developed a series of uncrewed Chang'e missions: in 2013, a Chinese probe made a soft landing on the Moon for the first time in a long time, and in 2020, it brought lunar samples back to Earth for the first time in forty years.

For 2028, China plans a crewed lunar flyby, and for 2030 — a human landing and the creation of a scientific base in cooperation with Russia.

Russia also attempted to return to flights to Earth's satellite after decades of hiatus following USSR missions.

In 2023, the Luna-25 mission was launched. But it ended in failure: the uncrewed probe crashed during landing.

India became the fourth country in history to successfully make a soft landing on the Moon: this happened in 2023 during the Chandrayaan-3 mission. Currently, Delhi has not announced an imminent human landing, but is consistently developing the necessary technologies and considers the Moon an important stage in its space program.

In January 2024, Japan made its first soft landing on the Moon: its SLIM probe demonstrated high precision landing. Previously, Israel made a similar attempt — in 2019, its Beresheet lander crashed during landing.

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