On July 16, 1969, the American Saturn 5 launch vehicle launched astronauts to the moon, showing the world an unprecedented television spectacle. Since then, around the Apollo 11 flight to the Moon in the world, the debate about "Were the Americans on the Moon or were not?"
There are so many questions for this flight that many books are devoted to their detailed analysis. However, it looks like Apollo 11 has another, apparently the most important question for today.
The epic flight took place on July 16-24, 1969, that is, the 16th will be the anniversary of the event, about which Businessinsider released an equally epic article: Astronauts explained why no one else visits the moon for over 45 years. The reasons are depressing. And what are these reasons?
When, after the end of the Apollo program, NASA stopped sending astronauts to the Moon, people kept asking: why aren't you poisoning again? NASA explained: expensive and unnecessary, we have proved the prestige of the first space power to everyone.
The answer looked very logical in 1982, when not so many years had passed since the "last step on the moon" in 1972. But then came 1992, 2002 and even 2012 passed! Next summer will be exactly 50 years since the "first flight to the moon". But no one is thinking of launching anything anywhere. And this is more than very strange.
On October 12, 1492 (so, in any case, it is considered official), Columbus and his team discovered America, landing somewhere in the Bahamas archipelago. The expedition at that time was very expensive, and the gesheft from it was zero: neither the promised short road to India, nor full holds of gold, nor crowds of obedient hardworking slaves. Nothing. Nevertheless, investors seemed to see the prospect and, since 1492, sailed to America almost every year. That is, the word “expensive” was of no interest to anyone, since there is the word “perspective”.
Another example is the mainland Antarctica. While sailing ships sailed to Antarctica with a probability or not, no one was involved in territorial disputes there, since the rulers of that era had little idea of how to bring their hussars and grenadiers there for an epic battle. However, as soon as people learned to make more or less reliable iron steamers, everyone immediately rushed to divide Antarctica. The prospect of mining something there in 1908 looked very vague, and it looks just as vague after more than a hundred years. However, every year the disputes are getting hotter, because again there is such a word “perspective”.
Exactly the same perspective is seen on the Moon. Whoever can build bases there first will be the king of the hill. For a start, for example, on the moon, you can place a sort of "ICBM", that is, interplanetary ballistic missiles, the positions of which can be easily reached. There you can also equip powerful telescopes, laser weapons, communication stations, and more. That is, all sorts of important and useful things that do not require the daily presence of astronauts. And of course, all this will be quite expensive, but a country like America can afford it. Let not 100 billion a year, but gradually, but the main thing is to move forward while everyone is standing still.
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Another super-promising moment is Mars, to which it is not clear when they will fly. The task of sending cosmonauts there will be more complicated than the lunar program, but for this the lunar program is there, to work out the technologies, so that there would be no cosmonaut Komarov and Apollo 13 later.
Back in 1957, the USSR made the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile, the so-called "seven", on which Gagarin was launched into space. And today, 70 years later, the same, in fact, the rocket continues to operate, having undergone a number of upgrades and called Soyuz-FG. But if there were regularly some problems with the first R-7 missiles, then in the 70s they already flew like clockwork. And 20 years later, they were so upgraded that it turned out to be a completely different rocket that carries ships into space much heavier than Gagarin's Vostok.
And the Americans could have followed exactly the same path, developing a universal spacecraft for flights both to the Moon and Mars. For 50 years of flights to the moon, every nut would have been rolled on it and it would have safely flown to Mars without any test launches. But … no one else flew to the moon.
And now, after 49 years (!) After the first flight to the Moon, Businessinsider, having gathered a chorus of elderly astronauts, invites everyone to listen to the same old song about "very expensive, so we don't fly."
There is no such thing as "expensive" in geopolitics. When it comes to the world domination of the owners of big capital, they will find funds and will not be stingy with the costs, especially not theirs, the capitalists will be the costs, but the taxpayers' money. Well, farmers in the Midwest will tighten their belts, and backyard basketball players in Harlem who have been on welfare since 1929 will go to work for Ford. Well, they will be unhappy. But in 2069 America will be great and everyone will ask her permission to visit Mars.
There are no fools among the US elites, they always look to the future, investing money in the most idiotic projects that, purely in theory, can bring superheterodyne in many decades. Why did such a blunder come out with the Moon? Why didn't you invest?
There are only two explanations (apart from the idiotic assumption that everyone in the United States is foolish).
The first explanation assumes that the Moon, for some reason, is not attainable in principle. Maybe because of the "flat earth", because of the evil aliens sitting on the moon or because of the impossibility of people living outside the Earth in principle. There are many reasons, none of which we know for sure.
The second explanation is that the United States did not even think about stopping flights to the Moon, but only did not tell anyone more about these flights, just stupidly improving technology and driving spacecraft back and forth. In this case, it is quite possible that the Americans have long ago built bases on the moon, the existence of which few people know.
