(Not) Moving On

[Canary42]

Taking up NJ's point under the momentous occasion thread (but not wanting to threadnap it) :-

( https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/ChatterBank/Question1817162.html )

where he stated :-

"the 'human endeavour' aspect seemed to grind to a
halt after Apollo had ended. It was almost as if they
said 'been there, done that, got the T-shirt, let's
move on.' But they never really did move on. "

this is an interesting point. To a certain extent they shot themselves in the foot in that with JFK's pet prestige project they didn't seem to have considered what moving on would entail (the most obvious natural progessions being another planet, or residence on the moon, both being enormous steps) and it was a case of object achieved, end of story. But alternatively you could argue that the ISS and/or the Space Shuttle were cases of "moving on". Watch this space as they say !

[douglas9401]

Advancement in killing machines trump all other reasearch.

It's where the return on investment is, anything else is incidental.

[Old_Geezer]

Probably difficult to get public support for funding a further manned project. Even though with a population that large the cost per citizen would be vanishingly small.

[jno]

NASA still has Mars in mind

https://www.space.com/nasa-plans-astronauts-mars-mission-30-days