Why don't astronauts go to the moon anymore?

The Apollo program answered a political mandate set in 1961: to beat the Soviet Union in the most spectacular arena possible. Once that goal was achieved in July 1969, the main justification for the budget evaporated. Funding began to decline even before the final flight, and the public turned away from broadcasts that looked increasingly alike from one mission to the next.

Three missions already planned were cancelled, their hardware distributed to museums and replacement programs. Teams and funding were redirected to the Skylab station, then to the Space Shuttle, two projects designed for low Earth orbit and presented as more economical than disposable lunar expeditions.

Each Moon landing used up an entire Saturn V rocket, built individually and never reused. When the production line closed, tooling, suppliers and know-how disappeared with it. Resuming lunar flights was therefore no longer simply a matter of will: a heavy-lift rocket, a spacecraft and a lander all had to be rebuilt, meaning a long and costly political decision had to be made.

Meanwhile, crewed flight was confined to a few hundred kilometers of altitude, from Salyut to the International Space Station, while lunar exploration was left to robotic probes, far cheaper and without human risk.

NASA has revived the goal with Artemis. The uncrewed Artemis I test flight looped around the Moon from November 16 to December 11, 2022, validating the Orion spacecraft and its atmospheric reentry. The following missions are meant to carry a crew around the Moon, then land near the south pole, where water ice trapped in dark craters makes a lasting presence conceivable.