Comment by wongarsu

We went to the moon in the late 60s as a massively expensive cold-war propaganda campaign, after the Soviet Union humiliating America for years when it came to firsts in space. It was a question of honor and showing that capitalism is better than communism.

Then it took roughly 50 years of progress to make space flight cheap enough that the economics make sense. With a couple setbacks a long the way that might have cost us a decade or two