The five reasons we haven’t been back to the moon since 1972, as NASA launches Artemis II

Astronauts on the Artemis II mission are currently orbiting Earth, carrying out final system checks before setting course for the moon. Launched from Florida earlier this week, the mission is the first crewed journey toward the moon in over 50 years.

In July 1969, Apollo 11 moon landing made history. Humans finally set foot on the moon, ticking off one of the biggest scientific and cultural goals of the 20th century. It was dramatic, risky, and felt like the start of something massive. But then… we just stopped?

After Apollo 17 in 1972, humans haven’t been back to the lunar surface. Not once. So what actually happened?

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The main reason? Money. A lot of it.

Getting to the moon was absurdly expensive. The US government initially estimated the Apollo programme would cost around $7 billion. It ended up closer to $20 billion. Once the original goal had been achieved, the appetite to keep spending just… wasn’t there anymore.

And that original goal was pretty specific. Back in 1962, John F. Kennedy stood in Texas and promised the US would land a man on the moon before the decade was out. That famous “We choose to go to the moon” speech basically kick-started everything.

By 1969, mission accomplished. The US had beaten the Soviet Union in the space race, made its political point, and proved its technological dominance. After that, more Moon missions didn’t feel as urgent, or as useful.

As one former Apollo engineer, Charlie Mars, told PBS News: “Because it was the first time, there was an energy. There was a passion that probably is not exactly the same today and hasn’t been for a while.”

Once the hype died down, so did the funding. NASA started getting budget cuts, and priorities shifted elsewhere. Scientific research missions just didn’t carry the same weight as the original “we got there first” moment.

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There’s also the awkward fact that we kind of… lost the know-how.

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The technology used during Apollo is now decades out of date. The people who built and ran those systems have mostly retired, and a lot of that expertise disappeared with them. As Astrobotic CEO John Thornton explained to Live Science, “That whole generation is out of the industry at this point. We are relearning how to do this, but we’re also learning it with technology that is new and different.”

So it’s not as simple as dusting off the old blueprints and heading back.

Modern missions come with their own challenges too. NASA has had to develop entirely new spacesuits, fix issues with the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield, and build a brand new lunar landing system from scratch. None of that happens quickly.

But more than anything, it comes down to politics.

“The short answer to that question is political will,” said Teasel Muir-Harmony from the Smithsonian. “It takes a whole lot of political will to send humans to the Moon… It has to be a priority over a sustained period of time.”

And that’s the problem. According to former NASA chief technologist Les Johnson, space goals tend to get completely reset every few years depending on who’s in charge. Which makes long-term projects like Moon landings… tricky.

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