>I'm sorry I only had the chance to watch those amazing Apollo years from afar. Must have been a fantastic experience.
>
>BTW, I'm sure they did go to the moon. Human history shows you have to make the big steps asap before it becomes too expensive. In this case it is too expensive to repeat a moon visit until we see the next technology breakthrough... unless the Chinese decide it is worth spending $$$$ to show who is boss.

I'm not sure this "asap before it becomes too expensive" is necessarily true in all of the "human history". The Russians don't seem to have that problem. Many technologies actually become cheaper.

Maybe this is something with the Anglosaxon version of capitalism that may contribute to this. Just this week I heard about the huge costs of firefighting... specially when it's outsourced to private businesses. Even there where it isn't, the equipment is leased from, or catering provided by, privatniks(*). These services sing and dance at a tune of $1000 a day for the AC'd conference room tent with table, refreshments etc. Is this the probable mechanism of how and why it becomes too expensive? If that's so, then screw that, nothing big will ever get accomplished, because whenever sufficient money is put together for anything, it will be squandered on unnecessary stuff without which we were perfectly OK before... but on which someone may make good money.

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(*) The word comes from Serbian et al, but I think everyone understands and actually may find it useful. I first wrote "by privates" but that one had at least two wrong connotations.