Re: The only way to send astronauts to the Moon for now?
The puzzling thing is: Sixty years ago, while NASA was learning how to do it, there were two or three launches a year for a decade - four in 1969 alone. Now, we _know_ how to do it and yet simultaneously we seem to have forgotten how... what happened?
What happened? Budget cuts. NASA in the 60s was getting huge amounts of money. Back then NASAs spending peaked at 55B 2023 dollars — 4.4% of the federal budget. Now it's less than half that in 2023 dollars and 1/10 that as a percentage of the federal budget.
Oh, and Boing was taken over by accountants from McDonnell Douglas and lost the ability to do engineering and manufacturing.