690. Why Did It Take 50 Years to Go Back to the Moon? Artemis II, NASA, and Government Bureaucracy

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. Today I want to talk about the moon and space travel.

So in 1969, America went to the moon for the first time, which is crazy to think about, right? We didn't have smartphones. We didn't have the internet. We didn't have most of the technology or the technology we use on a daily basis, right? But we still did it, which is incredible, but then we didn't go back for over 50 years.

And you've got to ask, why? Is it because we couldn't do it or are there other reasons? Well, if you have been paying attention, the Artemis II launched recently. Now, of course, we record these episodes a little bit before they air, so it may already be home by the time that this airs. But new space travel taking us to the moon is happening now, and so a lot of people are asking why it took so long.

Why did it take five decades for this to happen? So we are going to talk about that today. So in the very beginning of April 2026, the Artemis II was launched into space. And again, this was a huge deal.

People were super excited. Not only is this our first trip to the moon in years and years and years, like I said, but it's also going to be a manned spacecraft, right? So there's four people on board. There's a crew on board.

This is really exciting for people. And the rocket, you guys, that launched the crew into space, it's 32 stories high, okay? That is like a skyscraper of a rocket. I can't even comprehend it.

I'll be honest, space travel terrifies me for some reason. Even space movies, I'm always like, ooh. So it's all scary to me.

Flying into the unknown is just so crazy, but it's really cool that it's happening. So unlike other space travel, you know, you see the videos from 1969 where it's, you know, one giant step for man, one giant leap for mankind. I'm butchering that quote, but, and they actually went to the moon and you're seeing them.

This crew is not going to the moon. They're not going to, you know, park the spaceship and spaceship, you know what I mean? You know, it is a spaceship though, if you think about it, but they're not going to park the spaceship and hop right out and go step on the moon and plant the flag like we saw on the sixties. Instead, they're going to fly past the moon.

They're actually going to see the farthest side of the moon, the far side of the moon, which no people have seen before, before coming back. So it's a very specific mission. We're trying to see how far we can go.

And so we're going to go further than anybody's ever gone before. So we're going to go further than anybody ever has before, before returning back to earth in about 10 or 11 days after the launch, if all goes as planned. But again, this is so cool.

This is the furthest from earth humans will have ever gone. In fact, they might get to see a solar eclipse from space, which again, this terrifies me. Space terrifies me.

I wouldn't want to see it, but I think it's really cool that it's happening. And I'm always really curious to know what life is like when you're on board these space shuttles, because I don't know if you've seen, they have to eat this like freeze dried food. I remember as a kid, you learn about this freeze dried ice cream astronauts have to eat because, because of the way everything works up there and gravity and they're kind of floating around.

But I wonder how that works there. I know that they had to fix like a toilet issue. There was like a toilet that got, you know, that was broken and they had to fix, which is just funny to me.

Cause it's like, even in space, there's still plumbing problems. So let's talk a little bit about America's past trips to the moon. So we first landed on the moon, like I said, in 1969, that was Apollo 11.

That was a huge deal. Since then we had six moon landings, but the last one ended in 1972 with Apollo 17. So it's been quite a long time.

So why did we stop? Well, you have to realize that when we were trying to get to the moon that first time, 1969, that was in the peak of this cold war. And I've told you guys a little bit about this before, where it wasn't a full fledged war, but it was America, the West competing with these more communist socialist countries, specifically Russia. And we wanted to beat Russia to space.

We wanted to beat them to the moon. We called this the space race. Okay.

And so once we got there and we kept going back, it kind of became a like, well, we did it. We won. I guess we don't have to keep doing this anymore.

Right? So the urgency to do it just kind of disappeared. Right. And plus it was really, really expensive.

And we're going to get to that in a second. And then the priority switch. So NASA and space travel was more concerned with satellites and space stations.

And so the priorities just changed and the space race as far as getting to the moon just kind of ended. So we didn't stop because we couldn't do it. We just stopped because other things became more important.

Now you might think, well, that was 50 years. Couldn't we have done it earlier, 10 years ago, 20 years ago? And the answer to that is it was supposed to happen. There were trips planned, but they didn't end up going as planned because this is going to shock you guys, but government is not the most efficient entity to get something done.

When NASA has to build these space shuttles, they previously had to work with very specific companies. Okay. Imagine you wanted to build a tree house, but you had to use like a certain, certain people like a friend's big brother who lives in a neighborhood across the street.

You had to use only specific people. And here's the problem. Maybe that brother charges way more than you had in your budget.

That's exactly what NASA was going through because of the way that the bureaucracy was created and the way that it worked. They could only use certain companies that they had to contract to build everything they needed. And it was very, very expensive, which kept pushing them over budget and then pushing the timeline back because this might surprise you, but it's not super quick to build a space shuttle.

It takes a long time. So originally they thought this was going to be like 500 million per launch. And when I see that, my head begins to spin because that's so ridiculous.

Guess how much it really ended up costing when all was said and done? Well, over $60 billion so far. So this is not a small thing. And we're going to get to the funding and some issues with that again towards the end.

But let's just talk about the years since 1972, our last trip to the moon. At first, Congress had hoped that this would have happened 10 years ago. That was the original date.

But of course, here we are 10 years later, which is such a example of how the government works so slow. And now we're finally getting this crude shuttle up and to the far side of the moon. Now over the last 10 years where this was in the works, like I said, they kept going over budget.

The timeline kept being pushed. There was lawsuits as far as like which companies were going to work with NASA. And so it turns into this big headache.

That's why it keeps getting pushed. But it's really cool because Space X, Elon Musk's company, enters here too. And they're going to help them save money because NASA's old rockets, they weren't reusable.

Once they were launched off and they came back to the Earth's atmosphere, they were donezo, right? They were gone. But Elon Musk and Space X, they've invented a way to reuse these rockets. And so that's huge, right? That's great.

And so that's the company that NASA wanted to work with. But then Blue Origin, which is actually Jeff Bezos's company, they got upset. They said they weren't given a fair chance to compete.

And so they had to go back and forth with lawsuits where eventually the court did side with NASA saying, no, they made a logical decision. They made a appropriate decision. And so eventually it was able to proceed.

And so they started working on this project. But isn't this so symbolic of government, right? We had all this technology. We have more technology now than ever.

We've had Space X doing a ton of things. And again, we even have Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin. If you remember, there was that big thing with the billionaire space race a little bit ago.

In fact, I've done a couple episodes about that. And so we knew this could be done. Humans were able to do it.

But as soon as government gets placed in the way of something or gets put in charge of something, it becomes a complete disaster. It takes forever. Everybody points fingers at everybody else.

And it also becomes way more expensive than it needs to be. And that's crazy. Now, there is one thing I want to talk about because everybody's really excited about this.

And I get it. Artemis 2 going to space, going to the moon, going further than any humans have gone before. This does sound really, really cool.

But I want to ask you guys, even you space fans, do you think we should be paying for this with taxpayer dollars? Because that's something that always sticks in my mind. Part of me really wants to think, oh, this is so cool, even though, like I said, I'm terrified of space. But there's still something there's something otherworldly, literally, about seeing people go into space and seeing humans push themselves.

And that's great. You know, I just I don't know that we should be using 60 billion of taxpayer dollars to do it. But then I also think about all the other things government wastes our money on.

Would I rather pay tax dollars to have a crewed mission go up to the moon? Then I would, I don't know, was spending money on war or the welfare state or sending money to other countries or all the other ways, the things that like Doge uncovered back a year ago. Probably flying to the moon isn't the worst thing. Right.

But should we be spending the money on it? I don't know. Especially when I keep thinking of, you know, if Blue Origin and, you know, SpaceX want to do these missions, which SpaceX usually does want to do these missions, you know, and they're willing to do that, that they should be able to do it without taxpayer dollars, which brings to question, you know, do we need do we need NASA to be doing this? Do we need a government entity to be doing this? And it's one of those things that even people who are really opposed to all the taxation and the government waste, they have this soft spot in their heart for the moon and for space travel. And I totally get it.

Right. I understand. But it's something I want us to think about.

It's cool. But how should we be funding this with Blue Origin and SpaceX out there? Do we still need NASA to be funding this at all? And I mean, SpaceX has already shown they can do a heck of a job when it comes to sending things to space. So I want us to kind of think about that.

I don't want to discount how cool this is, especially for the space nerds, for the science nerds out there. And hopefully by the time this episode launches, the space crew will be back home. They will be safe and we will have all this new information.

But at what cost is what I want to know. So I will leave it there. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast.

And until next time, guys, I will talk to you later.