People get angry that it took us 50 plus years to get back, but you really need to understand why.
1.) The cost back then was 12 times larger than the cost today, each Apollo mission had absolutely 0 reusable payloads. We needed to understand more, we needed a space station and a vehicle that could get us back and forth to space, we did both, not always successfully but we found out how to make it cheaper, within our budget and ran 35 plus years of experimentation on the ISS/Space Shuttle
2.) It would mean nothing had we kept going, we didn't have the technology to stay on the moon, build moon bases, etc, that is what the ISS taught us, we had done all we could do under that basic technology.
Apollo proved we could do it, and won us the space race which truly meant we could whipe the USSR with our ICBM's, to the USSR, these guys got to the moon, imagine what they could do to us.. it was a huge victory towards ending the Cold war just 23 years later..
But here we are, we have the technology, we have the understanding of how to build there, stay there, we know the moon well.. And next time we return in 2028, we will never leave, humanity from 2028 onward will always have presence on the moon, and yes, that took another 50 years to do.
Congrats on the Artemis II crew, they have to get back safely, and they will, and the next step will be Artemis III which will stay in Earths atmosphere, but test the new Moon Landers of Blue Origin and SpaceX..
Then in 2028, human will from that point forward be a multi body species. How cool is that to say?
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