Why did we stop going back to the Moon?
The Apollo 11 Moon landing in July 1969 was a huge feat of human endeavour, engineering and science. It was a moment that the world had been waiting for. Buzz Aldrin descends onto the moon’s surface. Credit: Neil Armstrong/NASA. 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings. Since then just 12 men have walked on the lunar surface in six missions covering a period lasting less than three years. The Apollo project at its peak employed over 400,000 people in some 20,000 businesses and universities with a total cost adjusted to 2019 figures of around about a $145 Billion. So after all the work money invested, why did our interest in it drop like a stone in a vacuum and what were the real reasons why we stopped going to the moon. Today Apollo is seen as a groundbreaking episode in our scientific understanding and technological abilities, in just over 60 years we've gone from the first powered flight of the Wright brothers to Neil Armstrong stepping onto ...