Quote:1972 -- kind of strange that the concept of sending people to the moon didn't increase exponentially over the course of time. You'd think there are numerous people out there that would pay top $$ out there to have the opportunity to walk on the moon.

Traveling to and walking on the moon is so prohibitively expensive that is far beyond the reach of even the most wealthy, not to mention the sheer danger involved. Regardless, the moon missions were mainly used for propaganda purposes during the Cold War. We had fallen behind the Russians and needed a grand mission to display our technological prowess.


Many scientists, including von Braun, believed landing on the moon was a waste of time and resources. There was never any doubt we could do it eventually. The real target was Mars. That was the true goal of many of the German scientists we brought over after WWII. They believed the moon missions were a huge diversion of time, money, research and national will. Guess what, they were right. The speculation was that after expending huge amounts of money and resources landing on the moon the public would become sated and politicians would lose interest in funding any further deep space manned projects. Check and check. While true marvels of their time, the reality is in the long run, the Apollo program set American space travel back decades.

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