Why is America the

[laxbear1735]

I'm a high school student doing a report on the possible conspiracy of Apollo 11. I have been able to find a lot of good information arguing both sides of the issue, but i have one interesting question that has never been answered: If America is the only country that really did make it to the moon, why hasn't anyone else tried this feat? If anyone could give me an answer debating either for or against the conspiracy, please feel free to post your opinions.

Thanks for your help,
Laxbear1735

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

Coming in second is not even half as much fun.

And it is expensive.

[echnaton]

First of all, there really is no good information that can be used to argue that the landings were hoaxed. That is if by good you mean based in reality.

As to why no one else has gone to the moon. Europe has had an attitude that we need to solve problems on earth before they undertake the expense to send men elsewhere. The USSR tried to do it but their rocket kept blowing up, so they finally set sights on something they could accomplish, the MIR space station. The economies of Japan and China have only recently become large enough to support a space program at all. The cost of a moon mission program is staggering and the demands for the government to provide services and transfer payments with taxpayers funds is always high, as is the demand not to take those funds in the first place. The U.S. has a new moon program, but don’t hold you breath till we have a mission because it might not happen for 100 years, depending on the political support.

The Apollo program came together at a time in history that it could. The basic science had just recently become understood. Technology chemistry and materials sciences were making tremendous leaps. The country was rapidly growing more prosperous and with that generating substantial tax revenues. The welfare state had not yet started to consume the large portions of the Federal budget that it does now. Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson new a good political move when they saw one. The political and economic environment of the sixties are not those of today. Who knows maybe Brazil will be the next country to land a man on the moon.

[Bill Thompson]

It is expensive and way dangerous. Each time it was done was a chance that someone might die. This is because of solar flares. We were lucky that people walked on the moon when there was not a big solar flare storm that could have hurt or even killed the astronauts walking on the moon.

Others here can elaborate and give details better than I can.

[3onthetree]

The Americans didn't have it all there own way. The Soviets managed to send a whole squadron of banana flies around the moon.

[PhantomWolf]

If America is the only country that really did make it to the moon, why hasn't anyone else tried this feat?

Well it's not really a never asked before question, and as the others have said, the answer is mostly the cost.

Really up until recently there have only been two countries with the resourses and the will to finace such a scheme. If you look at space missions, China is the third nation to achieve manned orbital space flight, and that has been in just the last few years. The Soviets had an extensive Moon landing program up until the begining of 1974 when it was cancelled due to the repeated failure of the N-1 heavy lifter. In their case the reason wasn't money, but rather lack of expertise. Large rocket engines tend to become unstable if you just scale them up from smaller engines, as a result they have a habit of exploding. Rocketdyne, the designers of the F-1, the rocket motor that was to power the Saturn V, discovered this the hard way and basically had their team take an entire year off so that they could just study the fluid dynamics inside the engine and solve the problem. As history shows, they managed to do so and with the F-1 finally working, the Saturn V was powered by only 5 engines. The Soviets never worked this problem out, and so they tried to use -30- small rocket engines to lift the smaller N-1. As you can imagine, with 30 engines, the chances of something going wrong is hugely increased, and all three tests of the rocket resulted in explosive failures, one of which took out most of the launch pad as well.

With the failure of the N-1, the Soviet leaders withdrew the funding, sacked the head of the project and gave the resources to the Salyut program which had been showing some promise, despite a number of rather serious accidents, including the deaths of 3 cosmonauts when their Soyuz capsule decompressed. The Salyut program continued through the 70's with various levels of success untl Salyut 6 in 1978, which was probably the greatest Soviet space success of the 70's. Salyut 6 was replaced by Salyut 7 in 1982 and that was replaced by Mir in 1986. Mir remained the major drain of Soviet space funds until the fall of the Soviet Union when it became highly troubled. After a brief respite with the Shuttle visiting ended as well, and progress on the ISS well underway, Mir's retirement and de-orbit was completed by the Russian Space Agency on Feb 21st, 2001.

Currently the US is looking at returning to the Moon and making plans for this in 2015-2018, China has expressed an interest, but is unsure to how long it will take to gain the experience necesary for it, though would like it to be before 2020, and the Russians are planning tourist flights to do lunar flybys within the next 5-10 years. All of them will need the expertise, new tech, hard work and a lot of money to get off the ground, and really no-one else has those things yet.

[Kiwi]

Laxbear1735, welcome to ApolloHoax. Have you looked at the websites of regular contributors, JayUtah (Clavius) and Bob B. (Rocket and Space Technology)? The links are at the bottom of every page here.

Also look up the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal -- link at bottom of page too. If you read only the very first page of the Apollo 11 Journal -- the descent from lunar orbit to the surface -- you may find that it was a little more involved than many people imagine. Some of us here were lucky enough to listen in to it live on the radio as it happened.

If you investigate properly and ask questions here about anything you don't understand, you will find that there is no good evidence that the moon landings were faked. That only appears to be the case to laypeople who have little understanding of the subject.

An encounter I had on New Zealand bulletin board is one example of this:

HB: I reckon the moonlanding was faked.

Kiwi: Which moonlanding?

HB: *The* moonlanding!

Kiwi: Which one? Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, or 17?

HB: Ummm... I didn't know there were that many.

[Bill Thompson]

3onthetree said:

The Americans didn't have it all there own way. The Soviets managed to send a whole squadron of banana flies around the moon.

Yes, it was called the Zond missions.