We would have to conduct new tests and simulations. We would have to spend a few years re-developing the expertise. It changes the capabilities of the vehicle. It changes the mass, it changes the stresses and strains, it changes the interactions. "We would have to substitute modern materials. We don't have the expertise to operate the vehicle," Frost said. We don't have the expertise to understand how the real vehicle differed from the drawings. If we wanted to build another Saturn V rocket or Apollo CSM/LM today, this would be almost impossible, despite huge advances in technology. Over time, some of the materials used became obsolete." The technicians, engineers, scientists, and flight controllers moved on to other jobs.
"So, when the Apollo program ended, the factories that assembled those vehicles were re-tasked or shut down. "An individual person cannot contemplate the scale of detail needed to assemble and operate those vehicles, Frost said. Meanwhile, the command and service modules (CSM) and lunar module (LM) contained millions of additional parts. The Saturn V rocket that was used in the Apollo program had over three million parts. The vehicle cannot be built or operated without that expertise," Frost said in a post on Quora. "The development and operations teams acquire expertise that no one else on the planet has. Because of this, thousands of hours go into testing and tweaking, according to Robert Frost, an instructor and flight controller at NASA. Photo by NASA/LiaisonĪside from this, the people that were behind the Apollo technology and the expertise they had retired long ago, Matt Siegler, a research scientist at Southern Methodist University and the Planetary Science Institute, who is participating in several new NASA missions, told Newsweek.īuilding a launch vehicle and spacecraft capable of going to the moon is an extremely challenging task because there is very little scope for imprecision and error.
NASA discarded much of the Apollo hardware in the years since. flag on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. Hank Pernicka, a professor of aerospace engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, told Newsweek that much of the hardware used in the Apollo missions was discarded or shared with museums, although some was used in the Skylab space station that flew in the early 1970s.Ībove, astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin poses next to the U.S. The mission comes five decades after NASA dismantled the Apollo program, shedding its capability to go to the moon. The mission is the first step in the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon and establish a sustainable presence on the lunar surface, paving the way for future manned missions to Mars.Īrtemis I will serve as a test of NASA's next-generation Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System-the most powerful rocket ever built. NASA is now targeting the launch of Artemis I for September 3 after engine issues caused the first attempt to be scrapped. Now, the space agency is preparing to go to the moon again but experts told Newsweek that just because we've been before, doesn't necessarily mean that we can get there again.
Fifty years ago, the pioneering Apollo program, which landed astronauts on the moon for the first time, ended and NASA subsequently discarded much of the hardware that was used.
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