It remained staggeringly expensive because the Space Shuttle was a disastrous design to follow up the lunar rockets. It held up the space program half a century in some ways.
It reduced the manned program to Earth orbit, was supposed to be highly reusable to reduce launch costs, but didn't work out that way. And of course, it was supposed to be reliable and safer.
If we had continued going to the moon, even infrequently, or aimed further, we would have had no choice but to actually achieve reusability, safety and reliability much sooner.
(In the meantime, ... NASA's current manned program isn't better. Multi-billion dollar throw away rockers. Good thing someone validated reusable first stages and space craft, and is working to eliminate non-reusable second stages.)
It's also possible that materials science (and others) were too immature and could not be rushed without innovations in a million other areas. The tradeoffs needed across all fields may be worse for society, or just impossible until the global population could produce enough skilled workers.
Nope. The Shuttle was a catastrophic strategic blunder. Why do you think NASA is so adamant on chasing a second vehicle to go to the ISS when A) The ISS is nearly over; and B) Space X's vehicle is awesome?
Because of the Shuttle. Initially, and they actually did it for a couple of years, EVERY satellite launched into orbit by the US was supposed to use the Shuttle. Inevitably, when the Shuttle proved inadequate at all its jobs, they had to revert back to rockets. That's not a failure of materials science. That's a strategic mistake that could have been avoided.
I wasn't defending the shuttle. I was taking issue with this point:
> If we had continued going to the moon, even infrequently, or aimed further, we would have had no choice but to actually achieve reusability, safety and reliability much sooner.
Earth launch is the most difficult part of solar system travel due to higher gravity than most landing/launching targets, and Earth’s atmospheric maxQ force on launch, etc.
Given we had already achieved that, adding orbital refueling and landing/reuse are both more control issues than materials issues. We had the science to go anywhere.
We just needed to stay focused on the engineering and iterate, instead of going sideways burning money to maintain a completely unmaintainable unreliable faux-reusable less capable design.
A situation so politically intolerable that management ”coped” by operating in denial, and so objectively broken that small issues in a sea of complexity produced deadly disasters.
Normal iterative improvements were sacrificed for decades, to prop up a bad design.
It reduced the manned program to Earth orbit, was supposed to be highly reusable to reduce launch costs, but didn't work out that way. And of course, it was supposed to be reliable and safer.
If we had continued going to the moon, even infrequently, or aimed further, we would have had no choice but to actually achieve reusability, safety and reliability much sooner.
(In the meantime, ... NASA's current manned program isn't better. Multi-billion dollar throw away rockers. Good thing someone validated reusable first stages and space craft, and is working to eliminate non-reusable second stages.)