>>7900285>>7900483>>7908040>>7916169>>7916172the original moon landing, after factoring in inflation, cost the US tax payers 288.1 billion.
essentially, no private company had enough capital to do it. no company had 288 billion to blow. even if they wanted to, they actually didn't have 288 billion in the bank account. and if they did, the return was not enough to make it sustainable.
lets say you were a titan of industry by the 1950's. you invested your entire life's fortune of 300 billion into it. you sent a man to the moon. you made a little shack of a moon base on it. but that's it. what do obtain on the moon that brings back the 300 billion you spent to do it? there was nothing. the moon landing is not sustainable because you are not making 300 billion to recoup back the amount of money you spent.
the moon landing in the 1960's never made the money back the US tax payers spent. now you can say "hurr, the knowledge we obtain is priceless!" yes, you are right, it is priceless. but if you don't have the resources, you don't have the resources. it doesn't matter how priceless it is, how amazing it is, if you can't get enough resources to keep building ships, you are not going anywhere. even the soviets, as
>>7916169 pointed out, that had access to slave labor and central planning and central resource redistribution, able to seize people's property due to communist abolishing of property, still couldn't obtain enough resources to do it.
the only reason why spaceX is able to do it is because one, the government did contracts to pay spaceX to fly stuff for them into space, B, new private interests into space due to companies wanting their own satellites in space (research, gps, imaging is the biggest), and the fact, a lot of initial R&D was done and newer technology makes it cheaper than before. space is now cheaper today, than it was in the 60's due to better technology and a lot of foundational work was R&D.
