Why Is the Moon So Hard to Reach? (It’s Not Just Rocket Science)

Okay, pause everything.

If you know me, you know I have a problem. I am obsessed with the Moon. Not in a "oh, look, it's pretty" kind of way. I’m talking about a staring-at-it-through-my-telescope-at-3-AM kind of way. I track its phases, I memorize the craters, and I have a countdown clock on my laptop for the Artemis II launch.

But here is the thing that keeps me up at night (literally): We haven't been back in over 50 years.

My parents weren't even born the last time a human walked on the lunar surface. We carry supercomputers in our pockets and have self-driving cars, yet we can't seem to replicate what we did with slide rules and 1960s math?

I just read a fascinating (and slightly frustrating) article from CNN titled "Why humans have not been back to Moon," and it turns out, the answer isn't that we forgot how to build rockets. It’s actually way more complicated.

It’s All About the Benjamins (Or Lack Thereof)

The biggest reason we haven't returned? Money. During the Apollo era, NASA was eating up nearly 5% of the entire U.S. federal budget. Everyone was unified by the Space Race, and the government wrote blank checks to beat the Soviets.

Today? NASA gets about 0.4%. We are trying to go back to the Moon on a shoestring budget compared to the 1960s. As the article points out, this forces NASA to be slower, scrappier, and more reliant on private companies (shoutout to SpaceX and Blue Origin) to help foot the bill.

The Political Yo-Yo

Here is the other problem: Space takes a long time, but politics is short. A president will announce a massive Mars or Moon mission, but then their term ends four/eight years later. The next president comes in, scraps the old plan, and starts a new one.

This "stop-and-start" cycle has killed more moon rockets than physics ever did. We spend billions starting projects that get cancelled before they ever fly.

We Are Scared of Risk

Finally, the article highlights a huge cultural shift: Risk Aversion. In the 1960s, the mentality was "move fast and break things" (and hope the astronauts don't break). The Apollo 8 mission—sending humans around the Moon for the first time—was an incredibly dangerous gamble that we would never take today.

Modern NASA is (rightfully) obsessed with safety. We demand a near-zero chance of failure, which means more testing, more delays, and more caution. It makes things safer, but it also makes them much, much slower.

But... We Are Close

Despite all this gloom and doom, the article ends on a hopeful note. We are going back. The Artemis missions are built, the hardware is real, and the astronauts are selected. It’s taken longer than any of us wanted, but we are finally fighting through the budget cuts and the red tape.

The Moon is waiting. We just need to stop tripping over our own feet to get there.

Read the full CNN deep dive here