[vannevar]

The article is thought-provoking, but marred by an enormous and unsupported leap of logic at the outset:

Yet despite vastly superior technology and hundreds of billions of dollars in subsequent spending, the agency has been unable to send anyone else farther than low Earth orbit ever since.

Why? Because we insist that our astronauts be as safe as possible.

Safety concerns undoubtedly carry a cost at NASA, but they are hardly the central reason there have been no manned missions beyond Earth orbit. During Apollo, when presumably the agency wasn't so safety conscious, NASA's budget (adjusted for inflation) was twice what it is today, and as a percentage of the Federal budget it was over 5x today's level.

[jessriedel]

> as a percentage of the Federal budget it was over 5x today's level.

This is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the absolute budget, adjusted for inflation. In addition, given the greatly improved technology, we should be able to get to the moon for far cheaper. In fact, all the R&D has already been done. It should be a cake walk on half the budget.

[vannevar]

The share of the budget reflects the level of political support. So it's not irrelevant---undertaking something like a lunar mission requires long-term commitment, not just year-by-year budget equivalence. And during the Shuttle era, there was no political will to commit to a lunar or Mars mission in addition to building the Space Station. Even if the lunar mission did cost half as much, it would still mean doubling the budget.

[Duff]

The question is... Why?

If going to the moon is 75% less than it was in the Apollo days, that is cool, but what do we accomplish by going there?

[rflrob]

There's plenty of science still to be done on the moon, and when you combine the recent discovery of water in the craters and the theory that the moon is composed of Earth ejecta from an impact, and there's a reasonably strong science case to be made. Personally, I'm still of the opinion that we should prioritize Mars over the moon, but that's not based on any studied consideration of the science.

[mturmon]

The human-exploration portion of NASA has shrunk in comparison to where it was during Apollo. We have a lot of Earth-observing instruments now, planetary missions to Mars, etc. (This is not a bad thing, but it complicates the comparison.)